Fairchild: Foreign Plant Introduction Medal 
that he let me go, and it was not until 
years later that he admitted in a com- 
plimentary letter to me that the plans 
had finally worked out well and that he 
was satisfied. 
Leaving the office in charge of my 
friend Mr. O. F. Cook, who later was 
followed by Messrs. Jared Smith and 
A. J. Pieters, whose conduct of the 
office during trying times deserves the 
highest praise, we went through the 
West Indies, picking up an impression 
of the great value of the West Indian 
yam, the chayote, and the dasheen, 
all three of which are now promising 
cultures in this country. In Panama 
we picked up the Calamondine, estab- 
lished in Florida as a beautiful orna- 
mental and one of the best stocks for 
the orange. From Chile we sent a 
thousand seeds of a hardy avocado, 
trees from which seed I had the pleasure 
of seeing in California last October. 
SEARCHING THE WORLD FOR PLANTS OF 
ECONOMIC WORTH 
We crossed the Andes into the Argen- 
tine and sent from the Chaco a spineless 
cactus which later was exploited by 
Luther Burbank; also seeds of the Maté 
or Paraguayan tea, which has since 
become established in South Florida. 
Crossing to England, I first made the 
acquaintance, through Mr. Lathrop’s 
friends, of the Windsor Broad bean— 
rival of our Lima bean, though not so 
well suited to our climate. We wandered 
through Europe to Egypt, stopping in 
Austria to get acquainted with the 
Hanna barley and to secure a new and 
valuable variety of horseradish. 
In the Nile Delta the remarkable 
character of the Egyptian clover or 
Berseem attracted our attention, and 
our studies led to a second trip there 
later, and to a bulletin, which has been 
translated into Italian and has helped 
in the introduction of this plant into 
Tripoli and Tunis but not into America 
because of the lack of a climate suf- 
ficiently like that of Egypt to make it 
possible. 
I can see Mr. Lathrop in my mind’s 
eye today as we argued whether to 
send in a few seeds or a hundred pounds 
o72 
of seed of the valuable Egyptian cotton 
varieties. Mr. Lathrop prevailed, and 
we sent 100 pounds, out of which, 
through years of careful breeding and 
selection and wonderful team work, 
Messrs. Kearney, Cook, Swingle and 
Scofield have built up an industry for 
the farmers of Arizona worth to them 
$20,000,000 a year. 
The Lebbek tree, which in honor of 
the Empress Eugenie and the opening 
of the Suez Canal was planted in a 
five-mile avenue to the great Pyramids. 
was written up and seeds were im- 
ported. It is now a landscape feature 
in parts of Florida. 
Back again to the Dutch East Indies 
we traveled as far as New Guinea, 
sending collections of rices from Java, 
arranging for the sending of mango 
trees from Ceylon, eucalyptus trees 
from the Island of Timor—trees which 
are now sixty feet high and are scatter- 
ing seeds over South Florida—and 
gathering information in regard to a 
host of plants which later were imported 
into America. 
From the spice islands of Amboina 
and Banda, the coast of New Guinea, 
the Aru Islands, Ceram, Kisser and 
Letti, and the great mysterious Island 
of Celebes only a few things reached 
home alive, but a knowledge of that 
gigantic archipelago which stretches as 
far around the globe as New York is 
from San Francisco, served well to 
counterbalance the natural provincial- 
ism of my middle western education, 
which would make it appear that the 
agriculture of this globe is an agri- 
culture of corn, wheat and hogs, and 
has made it possible to conduct the 
Office from a broader standpoint. 
Turning back toward Europe, we 
made a quick run into India, and there 
saw for the first time the Brahmin 
cattle and the milch breeds of water 
buffalos. This glimpse enabled us to 
write an account which was published 
by Secretary Wilson, and was of as- 
sistance, I am informed, in attracting 
attention to Mr. Borden’s remarkable 
experiments which led to the importa- 
tion of the Brahmin stock into Texas 
and the resulting hybrid race of cattle 
