In the same way, hardy pears have been produced at the Iowa station for the upper Mississippi Valley where, up to the present time, the trees have badly winterkilled. Plums and grapes are also grown in Dakota and Minnesota where formerly little good fruit of this type was available.

Vegetable crops have received as much attention as fruits. Although grown for thousands of years in South America, where it was first planted by man, and in North America before the coming of the European settlers, the potato did not begin to assume its present form until the middle of the past century. Early Rose was the first variety of modern type to be generally cultivated. The history of Early Rose begins with the Reverend Chauncey Goodrich of Utica, New York. Goodrich had the idea that the potato, as a result of long continued vegetative propagation, had become weakened and was no longer able to withstand the disease that was then causing so much damage. Through the American Consul at Panama he arranged to have a number of different kinds of South American potatoes sent to him from which he planned to grow seedlings. One of the importations he named Rough Purple Chili, from its appearance and the place where it had been grown. Flowers formed; and from naturally pollinated seed balls he grew several thousand seedlings and in 1853 selected one for propagation that he called Garnet Chili. This has been grown up to recent times.

Garnet Chili was grown by Albert Bresee over in Hub-bardton, Vermont, and from the plants he raised came the seedling that developed into the Early Rose. First grown in 1861, it gathered local esteem until in 1868 it brought a record price of one thousand dollars - its originator being awarded a medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. This early maturing, pinkish potato was one of the first really important commercial varieties originated in the United States and has been grown at one time or another in every potato section of the country.

Early Rose has been remarkable, not only for its own good qualities but also for the many valuable varieties originated from it. In 1871 Luther Burbank gathered a single seed ball from an Early Rose plant growing on his farm at Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and planted the seeds the following spring. From the twenty-three seedlings thus raised came the Burbank potato that, at one time, was an important variety in this country and is still grown in a somewhat different form in the West. Many other seedlings were grown by Bresee, and some achieved great popularity. Some were introduced, before their originator intended them to be and to no profit to him, from tubers dug out and stolen from his trial plots. But not until ten years after the advent of the Early Rose did another variety appear that offered it serious competition. This was the Early Ohio, first generation offspring of Rose with an unknown pollen parent, the seed balls being fertilized naturally. This fine potato originated with Alfred Reese and has had first importance in the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota and the Kaw Valley of Kansas. Another and equally successful child of Early Rose is the Irish Cobbler. Little is known about its origin, but this variety, with Green Mountain and Rural New-Yorker, make up the bulk of the commercial crop in the East. Green Mountain, along with numerous other varieties that are not now grown, resulted from the attention of O. H. Alexander of Charlotte, Vermont. The parentage is unknown.

The potato-breeding efforts of E. S. Carman deserve particular mention. This former editor of the Rural New-Yorker advertized in his paper for potato seed and, in response to his appeal, received quantities from many parts of this country and from Europe. From this collection he grew many seedlings which he attempted to interpol-linate by hand. He had little success, but fortunately on some plants seed balls set naturally, and from these he grew the plants from among which were selected Rural New-Yorker, Carman, and Sir Walter Raleigh. All of these are important varieties. The first is grown by the millions of bushels in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Within recent years little interest has been taken in the production of new varieties of potatoes, owing largely to virus disease. This insidious infection is widespread but little understood. It is less prevalent in northern regions having a short, cool growing season. For this reason nearly all seed tubers are grown in the north and shipped each year to the main potato growing districts all the way down to Florida and Texas. This is a tremendously wasteful procedure. It would be better in many ways to have the seed tubers grown locally. This would not only save the expense of hauling but would also make possible the production of new varieties better adapted to each locality.

Recently the United States Department of Agriculture has announced a new virus-resistant potato from the breeding grounds at Presque Isle, Maine. This potato has desirable qualities of shape and yield, and, if it proves to be free from disease, it should be a most valuable production not only for its own culinary qualities but also for the production of other varieties better suited to diverse soils.

We have read much in newspapers, magazines, and books about Luther Burbank's creations in flowers and other plants, but how many of his productions can be found listed to-day in the seed, bulb, and plant catalogs, those final arbiters of lasting merit? The many beautiful flowers that are pictured in profusion and grown all over the country have been the result of painstaking and diligent effort by those who are for the most part unknown, men working in a quiet way in many parts of the world, in places that the newspaper reporters have never heard about, men whose fingers are more used to tweezers and camel's hair brushes than to the typewriter or fountain pen.