ACxRICULTURE AND FORESTRY IN CHINA 



We quote the following letter by Prof. Joseph Bailie, of the Univer- 

 sity of Nanking-, which appeared in the Peking Gazette for July i6, 

 1917: 



The Central China Famine Relief Committee, in the year 191 3, made 

 a grant of $10,000 to establish a colony for famine refugees on the 

 waste lands of northern Anhwei. The writer had already used some 

 of the famine relief funds for developing Purple Mountain, and, from 

 what experience he gained there, represented to the committee that 

 for Mex. $100 an average destitute family could be put upon vacant 

 lands, and in this way a family that was a burden to the State, being 

 settled on land that was useless to the State, could be transformed into 

 healthy citizens that would be an asset to the State. The $10,000 was 

 granted, in order to try this experiment upon 1,000 families. 



By March, 1914, a branch colony of our Colonization Association 

 had been organized at Lai-Anhsien, and a grant of 13,000 mou of 

 mountainous lands had been made to that branch association, the land 

 surveyed and mapped, and refugees to the number of 40 families were 

 registered and put on the best parts of these mountains. Last autumn 

 we had 80 families, numbering between 400 and 500 individuals, that 

 had settled on these lands and were self-sustaining. 



As there is still over $3,000 of this original $10,000 unused, and as 

 practically all of the land that could be used for agriculture on the orig- 

 inal grant had been broken up, we attempted this spring to secure an- 

 other grant of land on which we could settle 40 or 50 families more. 



We had also decided to establish a forest nursery for the colony, 

 which would supply young trees for the colonists to plant on those parts 

 of their own lands that were fit for forestry only, and to plant on those 

 mountains that were not fit for colonizing. The plan is to plant these 

 hills, to be later on a source of revenue to the branch colony. The col- 

 onists will be allowed to do the planting, and in this way pay back the 

 money used in supporting them while they were breaking up their lands 

 and getting on to their own feet. 



Rev. Charles Best, of the China Inland Mission, who has carried this 



work on to so successful an issue, and in whose hospitable home the 



whole entertaining of visitors and organizing and carrying out of the 



plan has been worked, informed the official, Mr. Wen, that he had in- 



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