500 



NOTES FROM FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS. 



ALGERIA. Algiers. Mr. Walter T. Swingle writes November 

 26 to Mr. W. A. Taylor, Assistant Chief, that Dr. Trabut , in 

 charge of the Algerian Botanical Service, has offered to send 

 us a complete collection of the more interesting native vines, 

 including a seedling Ahmeur bou Ahmeur, the North African 

 original of the Flame Tokay, that is of good quality without 

 ceasing to be a good shipper! I have found a very interesting 

 new persimmon of the South'?) Chinese type as distinguished 

 from the Japanese type. It differs decidedly from the Kaki, 

 has larger leaves, green fruit with an odor of jimson weed(!) 

 when unripe. Both the common small fruited variety and a new 

 variety with fruits measuring two and three quarters to three 

 inches in diameter are considered superior in flavor to the 

 red Japanese sorts. Dr. Trabut has the finest collection of 

 citrus fruits I have ever seen, certainly far superior to 

 anything in America. He has some twenty-five or thirty of 

 the principal American sorts growing alongside the choicest 

 Old World varieties. Algeria is destined to be THE orange 

 region of the Old World - the Spanish and Italian growers will 

 never equal the French in skill and alertness and especially 

 in ability to fight disease. In some ways the Algerian growers 

 are in advance of ours - not having the capital invested in 

 old varieties as we have, they are much more ready to test new 

 sorts, and Dr. Trabut has for ten years been collecting all 

 the cultivated sorts from all the orange producing regions of 

 the world. You can see in his garden the Satsuma and King from 

 Florida; Unshiu and Kawakami from Japan; Dancey Tangerine, 

 South African Naartjie, Clementine and Saigon No. 19 (these 

 last two having long leaves unlike our tangerine and two 

 months earlier, as early as the Satsuma in. this climate) and 

 a lot of other loose-skinned oranges in full bearing." In a 

 letter of November 3C to Dr. B. T. Galloway he adds: "I was 

 very much impressed by the value of the Clementine Tangerine 

 which is by far the earliest of the kidglove type except the 

 Satsuma. It is a bright red-orange medium-sized tangerine 

 with a special flavor and aroma, not, however, so different 

 from the ordinary tangerine as is the Satsuma. A tree sent to 

 Florida three years ago and planted on the leased orchard at 

 Glen St. Mary showed very marked resistance to cold - probably 

 as much as the Satsuma. Dr. Trabut is convinced that it is a 

 hybrid of a tangerine with poll or. from the 'granito' a willow- 

 leaved Spanish variety of sour-orange. I do not see any trace 

 of sour orange in the Clementine, but I must admit that forms 

 very like the 'granito' do appear among its descendants. Some 

 of the specimens I am sending you show the punctures of the 

 fruit-fly, Ceratitis ( ? ) . I fear this would make us a lot of 



