The Modern Alchemist 



787 



ment has meant many millions of dollars 

 to the peach industry of that State. 



ORIENTAL PLANT EXPLORATIONS 



China has proved a fruitful field for 

 this work, and an explorer has been kept 

 there constantly during the year. His 

 work has taken him through the little- 

 known regions of southern Siberia, the 

 border of Manchuria, the excessively dry 

 mountains west of Pekin, and through 

 the fertile country between Pekin and 

 Hankau. This explorer has sent to this 

 country over a thousand living seed and 

 plant specimens for trial. Among these 

 are promising blackberries and currants 

 from northern Korea ; a north Man- 

 churian apple; a collection of 24 named 

 pears from north China; several bush 

 cherries and plums and peaches from 

 northern Siberia — perhaps the very 

 northern limit of peach culture in the 

 Orient ; drought-resistant alfalfas ; dry- 

 land rices ; staple foods of the native 

 Manchurians, but unknown to us, from 

 regions where the climate is similar to 

 that of the Dakotas ; and a cherry noted 

 for remarkable earliness, ripening its 

 fruit in mid-April in northern California. 

 Besides these, the explorer has sent in a 

 large number of ornamental plants which 

 our nurserymen have been for some time 

 anxious to secure, because of the unusual 

 hardiness of these north China species. 



NEW ALFALFAS AND CLOVERS 



During the year an explorer has re- 

 turned with seeds of the yellow-flowered 

 Siberian alfalfa, and these seeds have 

 grown into promising plants in the severe 

 climate of the Northwest. The results of 

 their trial will determine whether we shall 

 import large quantities of the seed, as we 

 have previously done with the Turkestan 

 and Arabian alfalfas, both of which con- 

 tinue in their respective territories to gain 

 in popularity. The Toten clover, also se- 

 cured from Norway, where it is culti- 

 vated for its extreme hardiness, is being 

 tested in the Dakotas. 



For the rice growers of the South there 

 have been introduced 46 varieties from 



different parts of the world, among them 

 the one-hundred-day rices — early sorts, 

 which, in Japan, give crops when ordi- 

 nary rices fail. 



The fruit-growers of our tropical pos- 

 sessions have had their interest in mango 

 growing stimulated by the fruiting of 

 some of our East Indian fine-flavored 

 varieties. All the local nurseymen are 

 ready to sell in quantity several of the in- 

 troductions of the department, and not 

 only are the experiment stations of Ha- 

 waii and Porto Rico taking up this fruit, 

 but, what is especially important, private 

 plantation owners are planting out orch- 

 ards of our introduced sorts. 



The growing scarcity of wood for man- 

 ufacturing purposes has led the depart- 

 ment to make some extensive investiga- 

 tions of bamboo culture in Japan and 

 other countries. Already a number of 

 varieties have been introduced and steps 

 have just been taken for the inaugura- 

 tion of a considerable number of plan- 

 tations of these important plants in dif- 

 ferent parts of the South. 



During the spring and summer of 1907 

 a new date garden was established - at 

 Indio, California. A new date garden has 

 also been established at Laredo, Texas, in 

 a part of the Rio Grande Valley where 

 the climate in spring and early summer 

 is the hottest in the United States. It is 

 believed that good dates can be grown 

 in this part of Texas. The date palms 

 in the Mecca garden, now from two to 

 three years old, have begun to fruit 

 freely, and the famous Deglet Noor and 

 a number of other choice varities have 

 ripened perfectly, in spite of the fact that 

 the season has been unusually cool. Dur- 

 ing the past year much interest has been 

 taken in the planting of seedling date 

 orchards in the hope of securing new 

 varieties better adapted to American 

 climatic conditions. Altogether some 

 150,000 date seeds have been planted in 

 cooperation with growers in California, 

 Arizona, and Texas. These growers will 

 receive one or two offshots from im- 

 ported date palms for every 250 date 

 seedlings set out in proper form. 



