Excerpt from Gardening for the South: Or How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits

To the list Of benefits conferred on the gardener by the scientific student must be added the power to repro duce our finest fruits by grafting and budding, making it possible to perpetuate the tree that has been improved to the point of maturing excellent fruit some time before fruit will ripen on the ordinary tree under the usual conditions. The great strides made in the selection of vegetable seeds, so that the purest seed and the most healthy plants may be secured, must be credited to the United States Department of Agriculture through the painstaking efiorts of its scientific workers. The develop ment of new and improved varieties of plants by crossing and by hybridization could only be possible through the intelligent experiments of a mind fully cognizant of the scientific laws governing the growth and the develop ment Of flowers and seeds. In this connection may be mentioned as a matter of illustration the splendid work accomplished by T. V. Munson, of Texas, and others in increasing the number of fine new grapes and extending the list of this delightful fruit. Within very recent times the United States Department of Agriculture has suc ceeded in producing by hybridization hardy orange plants, so that it is now possible to develop this fruit as far north as Southern Georgia with safety, and the indications seem to point to the chance Of growing this plant as far north as Augusta, Georgia, without fear Of destruction during our ordinary winters. Some of these hybrids are now growing in the horticultural grounds Of the Alabama Experiment Station at Auburn, and the experiment will be made during the coming winter to continue the growth without any more protection than is usually given to peach trees, with the hope that the experiment will be successful.

In the matter Of frost warnings to the market gardeners it will be interesting to know how much money is saved annually in the timely warnings from the Weather Bureau at Washington of the approach Of cold waves, so that the delicate plants might be protected; and yet this is the work from its inception Of scientific thought and under the management of scientific Oh servers.

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