Federal Promotion of Crops


 THE WILKES EXPEDITION
 This expedition, sent out in 1838, was the first major effort
made by the Navy to encourage plant introduction. Commander
Charles Wilkes headed the expedition which cruised the Pacific
from 1838 to 1842 under orders to secure any noteworthy new agri-
cultural plants. The botanist, William Rich, accompanied the
expedition to collect botanical specimens, agricultural seeds, and
plants.
 Other nations, particularly France and England, had long been
dispatching botanists on plant explorations. In 1821 the French
Government sent a corvette under Samuel Perottet to collect a
load of rare plants and seeds including the Morus multicaulis from
the Philippine Islands and parts of Asia.3
 Introductions From Madeira-All the information available re-
garding seeds and plants brought back by the Wilkes Expedition
comes from two volumes of the original letters from members of
the expedition to the Secretary of the Navy. A shipment of fifteen
kinds of plants, roots, and seeds was made to John McArau of
Philadelphia, from Funchall, Madeira, in 1838. Another box of
seeds collected at Madeira, with directions for planting, was sent
from Rio de Janeiro. To Buist, a florist at Philadelphia, Wilkes
sent "Box No. 5" which contained seeds from Madeira, St. Iago,
and the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro. There were also roots of various
Brazilian plants. A box of seeds was delivered by the Navy agent
at Philadelphia to John Kann, who distributed them to members
of the Philadelphia Horticultural Society.
 Early in 1840, William Rich shipped to Boston two cases of
seeds given him by the Government Botanic Garden of Sydney,
New South Wales. Some of the seeds were from "rare if not new
plants." Rich requested that these be placed in the hands of per-
sons who would take proper care of them.
 Fiji Tomatoes-In October of that same year, Wilkes sent James
Paulding, then Secretary of the Navy, twenty-eight papers of seed
including some of a tomato from the Fiji Islands. These tomato
seed had no visible effect on our tomato culture, but a variety of
some significance did come from the Fijis in 1862. Most of the
seeds in the papers from the Fijis came from ornamental shrubs
 I The Morus multicaulis, the mulberry for feeding the silkworm, caused great
speculation in America for many years during the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury.