A correspondent from Switzerland, St. John's County, Florida, sends us clippings from the Florida Dispatch and other papers, and says: "Can you give me any facts, going to show that any plant, native of a hot climate, has become acclimated in a cold climate, or vice versa?"

The extracts read:

"I visited an old-time friend, Samuel Bowers, at Cedar Rapids, Iowa; he has been in the nursery business thirty-five years. His fine orchard, that had been his pride for years, all torn to pieces by the cold the winter before, and much of his stock in nursery seemed, even the Wealthys, frozen half-way to the ground.

"Then one hundred miles further on, is Dudley W. Adams, a man who has done more for that country, in the way of pomology, than any other man in the Northwest, his fine orchard of eighty acres, hardly a tree left, and so I found it in all that country, turn which way I would. The sad disaster, nothing left but dead trees, with but few exceptions, a Duchess, Wealthy and a few sour crab apples (and often these kinds were dead), were all that were left, and as I have said before this, Iowa lost by frost that winter many times more than our State did by the freeze of last winter".

The next extract reads :

"I think Mr. Mott is mistaken, when he asserts that there is no such thing as acclimating a plant. Only a few years ago, apples could not be successfully grown in Minnesota; thousands of trees of the hardiest varieties then known had been sent out, yet almost all froze out before reaching a bearing age. In the face of all this discouragement, courageous orchardists persevered in growing seedlings, until they have achieved success; and to-day there are thousands of bearing apple trees in Minnesota, although neither the soil nor the climate has changed. If this is not acclimation, what is it? I could give other instances, if space would permit".

A succeeding paper produces a correspondent who says :

" I wonder about how much Mr. Tabor knows about 'acclimating' apples in Minnesota; about how much he knows about apple-raising in that State, anyway. If he knows anything about it at all, he knows that ten, fifteen, yes twenty years ago, there was less trouble to grow apples in that State, than it has been for the past three years. He knows too, of the seedlings produced up there, none of them have been any more hardy to withstand their terrible winters than the parent apple.

"The Wealthy, a seedling of the Oldenburgh (a Persian apple), proved itself nearly as hardy as its parent, and in it, Mr. Gidings gave to that country a valuable acquisition.

"Then there are seedlings from the Siberian crab-apple family, that some have proved themselves of value, but usually they die with frozen sap blight".

It is extremely difficult to answer the question put to us, because no one has any definite idea of what acclimate means. In a general sense, it signifies that a plant shall live and thrive in a country wherein it is not indigenous. There are numerable conditions besides those which would come under the head of climate, that would affect the result. As the question is put by our correspondent, acclimate seems reduced to a question of temperature. Can a plant, a native of a hot clime, be made to endure a colder one?

We never knew a potato that a white frost would not kill; and it does seem to us, that we shall never have a potato that a white frost will not kill. We do not think that any amount of selection would ever give us a frost-proof potato. And yet as regards trees, it is undoubted that some varieties are hardier than others. In rows of varieties of apples in nurseries, some kinds will have every tree injured, while other kinds will not have one tree injured. We should have to decide that trees native to comparatively mild regions, might produce varieties that would prove hardier in a cool country than the original variety; though we should not be disposed to think this elasticity extended over a very wide range of temperature.

You may recollect, Mr. Editor, a severe winter some years ago that destroyed many evergreens in this neighborhood that were supposed to be perfectly hardy, whilst more tender varieties were unharmed.

It was the practice many years ago to sow clover and Timothy seed together in the fall. Of late years it is only safe to sow clover in the spring, and then not too early. Gardeners and farmers all over the country will tell you that many of their modes of culture have to be changed from time to time, and that many strange things happen that the most experienced and intelligent are unable to give a reason for. The variations in the atmosphere, the absence or excess of some constituent, though the temperature may be the same, and the consequent variation in the condition of the soil, or the sap that feeds the plant, may have something to do with these sports in nature.

[This very suggestive note leads us again to observe that we must agree on what we mean by acclimating. As we have generally understood the word it means so changing a plant's character that it may learn to love conditions it would now despise. But the note of our correspondent would seem to indicate that by acclimating may be meant the changing of the conditions to suit the unchanging nature of the plant.

After all, there may be grounds for belief in both views. We noted, recently, that we regarded the production of a potato that would be frostproof a feat beyond the art of acclimation; and yet, if the belief of gentlemen who have recently written in science publications in England be correct, that the modern potato is descended from Solanum Jamesi, Fendleri, Maglia, or other tuberous South American forms, nature has already performed that wonder, for the form known as Fendleri is quite hardy in Germantown; and again, there can be no doubt whatever that the Douglas Fir, of Colorado, is the very same thing with that of California, yet the one from Colorado is as hardy as "a rock" in Germantown, while no one has ever been able to get a plant from the Pacific coast through even a mild winter in that place. Starting, as these must have done, from exactly the same parentage, and yet diverging into two races, the one hardy and the other tender, is all the evidence the most positive might desire that plants can change their nature sometimes, and be in this way acclimated, as well as be acclimated by the conditions changing to suit their constitutions. - Ed. G. M].