DRY LANDS AND FORESTS 113 



ment of Agriculture at Washington for the 

 last several decades. There is a Darwinism 

 among plants as among animals. The fittest 

 survive to form individual races. Somewhere 

 in the world an isolated plant has lived and 

 thrived among the very adverse conditions 

 which have meant death to millions of its kind, 

 and it is these isolated few that are being 

 sought continually by a small army of plant 

 scouts who scour the world in their search. 

 The interior of China, Northern Corea and 

 the steppes of Siberia present conditions simi- 

 lar to those to be found in the Great Plains 

 regions high, wind-swept plateaus and arid 

 plains. 



Upward of $50,000 a year is now being 

 spent on exploration for crops suited to the 

 peculiar conditions of cold and drought to 

 render productive a vast region that otherwise 

 would continue to produce only bunch grass 

 and that so sparsely that to graze one rangey 

 steer requires between twenty-five and fifty 

 acres. Alfalfas from Siberia and Turkestan, 

 the non-saccharine sorghums, Kafir corn, stone 

 fruits, the Chinese jujubes, dry-land poplars, 

 willows and apricots and date-palms are con- 

 quering arid acres. Recently the rare date, 



