ABSTRACT
Agricultural writers and leaders of agricultural societies seized upon new introductions without always examining their claims cautiously before pressing them upon the public as important innovations. Plant breeding was still a young science and yet much progress had been made by 1860. Hybridizing was practiced by plant specialists, new varieties of grain, tobacco, cotton, apples, pears, and plums had been perfected and time-tried vegetables had been improved. An alleged varieties of cotton that were ardently pushed by seed salesmen passed under such fancy names as Banana, Multiboll, Pomegranate, Sugar Loaf, Silk, and even Accidental Poor-Land Cotton. The most pervasive and costly, in terms of lost time, energy, and money, was the craze for raising silkworms and growing a species of the mulberry tree, the Morus multicaulis. The deterioration of sugar cane caused much concern, and the federal government made numerous efforts to import species from the Far East and South America to improve yields.
