1896.] ^^ [Pepper. 



II. 



Chronological Facts as to the Growing of Eucalypti in 

 Algeria and Tunisia. 



The first seeds of eucalypti consigned to the earth in 

 Date of intro- northern Africa were sown in the Jardin d'Essai of 

 diictionof Euca- Algiers in 1862, by Mr. Hardy, director of the botani- 

 lypti into nortii- cal garden thus named, and in the same year by the 

 ern Africa. Comte de Belleroche, who procured them from the 



director and sowed them in his property in the Com- 

 mune of El Biar, four miles from town.* 



These experiments having succeeded, the trees were 



Successive ex- soon grown to prevent malaria, still so prevalent 



penmen ts in throughout northern Africa, and which made most 



growinsf them as , . ., . , ^nnr^ i -.n^n , ., 



a preventive of cruel ravages m Algeria between 1867 and 1876, while 

 malaria. immigration and the development of the colony were 



receiving their greatest impulse. 



The importance of preserving the public health where satisfactory, and 

 of improving it in the more numerous districts where conditions and cir- 

 cumstances were against it, was, at this time, more generally recognized 

 by the government and the people. The "Fonts et Chaussees,"f the im- 

 portant companies and societies, corporations, municipalities and many 

 private individuals grew eucalypti in the principal settlements infested 

 by the disease, believing that they had at last discovered a panacea 

 against the evil. 



In 1868 Mr. Ernest Lambert, inspector of the forests of Algeria, sowed 

 a grove on the Bouzareah mountain, above Algiers, where now is the 

 forest, or rather wood of Baihneu. Then Dr. Mares, atBoufarik, planted 

 a grove on his farm, reporting to the Societe d' Agriculture seven years 

 later that the health of his neighborhood was satisfactory. Malaria in 

 its worst forms had constantly prevailed there until then and until the 

 land Jiad been successfully drained. 



During the two succeeding years, the Societe Algerienne planted 100,- 

 000 eucalypti near Ain-Mokra, a village on the shore of Lake Fetzara. 



The mining company of the Mokta soon followed with many still 

 larger plantations in the same region, where the public health improved 

 towards 1875, the mines being thenceforth worked during the summer, 

 an impossibility until then, owing to the excessive mortality among the 

 workmen, due principally to pernicious forms of malaria. 



The latter plantations remain among the most extensive in Algeria, and 

 offer a striking instance of the frequently great aid given by eucalypti 

 against malaria. Thick curtains of the trees were grown between the 

 lake and the village, while, at the same time, a draining canal was cut in 



* Now known as El-Afla, and belonging to the author. 



t Government engineers, entrusted with the construction and repairing of roads and 

 bridges, and the buoying of harbors. 



