For October, 1922 



289 



An Arnold Arboretum Plantsman's World Tour 



WM. N. CRAIG 



TWENTY-SEVEN months seeins a long time to be 

 away from home, liut when over 100,000 miles are 

 covered during that period, one gains the impres- 

 sion that the traveler must have been constantly on the 

 move. And when it is remembered that the major part of 

 this time was spent either in the southern hemisphere or in 

 the equatorial regions of the world, where in many cases, 

 somewhat slow and primitive means of locomotion exist, 

 one must conclude that the lately completed journey of 

 Ernest H. Wilson, noted plant collector and assistant 

 director of the famed Arnold Arboretum of Boston, must 

 have been a long and rather arduous one, although dif- 

 ferent from the several expeditions vmdertaken in western 

 China for James \''eitch and Sons of London, and the 

 Arnold Arboretum. 



Having gained valuable experience in successive ex- 

 peditions imdertaken in Formosa, Korea, Manchuria, 

 western China, and Japan, during the course of which he 

 added no less than 1193 species and varieties of woody 

 plants, hundreds of which are proving most valuable 

 garden plants, since their dissemination throughout the 

 world's temperate zones, Air. Wilson was well fitted to 

 undertake his last world tour, not for the purpose of 

 collecting seeds and plants, but to secure dried specimens 

 for herbarium uses of many plants doomed ere long to 

 extinction owing to the progress of civilization ; to get in 

 touch with correspondents of the .\rnold Arboretinn in 

 various parts of the world ; to establish means of mutual 

 help with collectors and authorities : to effect exchanges 

 with institutions and collections to the end that the her- 

 liarium of the Arnold Arboretum shall possess specimens 

 of every woody plant on earth. 



Leaving Boston on July 8, 1920, Air. Wilson first went 

 to England and crossing to France, sailed from Toulon 

 for Freemantle in western Australia, by way of the Suez 

 Canal and Ceylon. After touring western Australia he 

 took the transcontinental train for Adelaide in southern 

 .\ustralia, and thence to Melbourne and Sydney. Next 

 he sailed for New Zealand and arriving at Auckland, 

 toured the length and breadth of that country by train 

 or motor car. From New Zealand he went to Tasmania, 

 and after a short stay there, returned to Melbourne, and 

 from there to Brisbane in Queensland. 



Next Mr. Wilson went by steamer to Thursday Island 

 and Port Darwin in northern Australia ; sailing from 

 there for Java, and having crossed that wonderful tropical 

 island, went to Singapore, Penang and the Federated 

 Ma'ay States, staying over at the capitol, the new city 

 of Kuala-Lampur. From Penang he sailed for Calcutta, 

 calline en route at Rangoon in Burma. From Calcutta, 

 he went through northern India via Lucknow by way of 

 Dehra and Simla to Rawalpindi ; thence to Kashmir, re- 

 turning to Calcutta by way of Lahore, Delhi, Agra and 

 Cawnpore. Aeain leaving Calcutta he went to Sikkim 

 and ^ssam, and later went south from Calcutta to Ceylon 

 via Mad'-as, returning by the west coast of India to the 

 Nilsriri Hi'ls, thence to Panealore and Bombay. 



Af'-ira yet remained to be conquered. Sailing from 

 Bom'^av. Mombasa on the east coast of .Africa was 

 reache''. and from there, Mr. Wilson went into the equato- 

 rial regions bv way of Uganda to the sources of the Nile 

 and the ^'e-'^a Mountain rountrv. Returning" to Alombasa, 

 he took slr'p to Beira in Portuguese East Africa ; thence to 

 Zanzibir and Dares Salaam. From Beira train was taken 

 through southern Rhodesia and to the Victoria, Falls on 



the Zambesi, falls twice as high as Niagara and carrying 

 about the same volume of water ; next southward by train 

 to Pretoria, the Transvaal capital ; thence east and south 

 through Bloemfontein to Port Elizabeth and through Cape 

 Colony to Cape Town. From Cape Town, steamer was 

 taken to England and later from England to the United 

 States which was reached August 24, 1922. 



Everywhere the traveler received a warm welcome, the 

 very name of the Arnold Arboretum seemed to procure 

 for him special attention, for news of his coming had 

 preceded him. 



Australia Air. Wilson descril>ed as a vast and lonely 

 continent, possessing great resources but rigidly limited 

 in its development by lack of labor, which the Labor 

 parties there will not admit. Much of Australia is poten- 

 tial cotton country. Western Australia resembles Cali- 

 fornia and our arid W'est. New Zealand like Oregon 

 and Washington is green, fruitful and beautiful, while 

 Queensland, one of the best Australian states, although 

 given to extreme labor policies, is tropical or sub-tropical. 

 W'estern Australia is mainly a grazing country while 

 southern Australia is a great grain-producing region. 



In Queensland, much of the world's cotton could be 

 produced but for the labor shortage. The whites will 

 not tolerate the admission of the yellow or black races. 

 The white man says he will do all the work, but he can- 

 not do so. He succeeds for a time but eventually pro- 

 duction fails. So with the white woman. In such a 

 warm climate she cannot successfully perform all the 

 household tasks falling upon her and at the same time, 

 produce healthy children. The white race seems to be 

 writing its own death warrant in refusing to have the 

 assistance of the black and yellow races. 



The happiest and most contented people in the world 

 are the New Zealanders. Their beautiful and rich coun- 

 try produces about everything desirable in climate and 

 crops, and here while no one is verv rich, there are no 

 poor. Their labor rule is much less fanatical than in 

 some of the Australian states. 



Australian trees are rich but strange. The Eucalyptus 

 is the characteristic and predominant tree. Western .Aus- 

 tralia has the "grass tree" or "black boy," a tree with a 

 frowzy top, somewhat resembling a palm in the descend- 

 ing masses of grass at the top and waist. Wood of the 

 jarra tree, Eucalyptus niarginatiis, is specially valuable 

 as the wood makes splendid paving blocks. The Karri 

 or "marble trunk" sometimes reaches the height of three 

 hundred feet, standing in great columned rows with a 

 limitless carpet of bracken. The interior of Australia is 

 an arid region and in a large meastire treeless. 



Amongst the exotic pests troubling .Australia is the 

 American prickly pear, or Opuntia which shows a dispo- 

 sition to take entire possession of the grazing lands, and 

 which seems impossible of eradication. In New Zealand 

 blackberries overrun fields and meadows, while water 

 cresses choke ponds and streams. The rabbit pest con- 

 tinues unabated, but an enormous number are killed an- 

 nually and exported in a frozen state. 



The African baobab tree occurs in northern Australia. 

 In Queensland a curious vegetable feature is the bottle 

 tree, Brachychiton rupcstris, which not only looks like a 

 vast bottle standing on the ground but also yields drink- 

 able water when tapped like a maple tree. The baobab 

 while huge and imposing possesses wood which is almost 

 (Continued on page 295) 



