i8o 



The National Geographic Magazine 



their descendants by millions and form 

 what is one of the characteristic features 

 of California — its orange groves. 



The tomato, which before the war was 

 a curiosity from Peru and was used to 

 frighten slaves into obedience, because 

 they thought it poisonous, was grown last 

 year on over half a million acres of gar- 

 den land. 



The lima bean, whose arrival in this 

 country no historian has considered 

 worthy of chronicling, has so grown in 

 importance since its introduction, some 

 time about 1820, that today special 

 freight rates are granted it between 

 southern California and the Atlantic 

 coast, and thousands of acres of land 

 where the rainfall is extremely light are 

 devoted almost exclusively to the cultiva- 

 tion of this Peruvian bean. 



The potato, from the highlands of 

 Colombia and Peru; the rhubarb, from 

 central Asia; the asparagus, from Eng- 

 land, and even the celery of southern 

 Europe, have all been, one after the other, 

 introduced into our fields and gardens. 



Though these great changes in the 

 farm and garden areas of the country 

 have been wrought in less than a lifetime, 

 they have still been too slow, and today 

 changes as far-reaching and important 

 as the introduction of the olive or the 

 orange are being brought about by gov- 

 ernment aid in a surprisingly short time. 



The Department of Agriculture is 

 growing in this country some of the 

 things that we now import and for which 

 we pay annually many millions of dol- 

 lars ; it is forcing into public notice and 

 encouraging the trial of foods that the 

 people of other countries find excellent 

 and of which we are ignorant; and it is 

 bringing in from all parts of the world 

 plants that are now wild, but that can be 

 tamed by breeding with others now in 

 cultivation, thus contributing to the crea- 

 tion of fruits and vegetables that the 

 world has never seen before. 



This is the government enterprise of 

 Plant Introduction — to introduce and es- 

 tablish in America as many of the valu- 

 able crops of the world as can be grown 



here ; to educate the farmer in their cul- 

 ture and the public in their use; to 

 increase by this, one of the most powerful 

 means, the agricultural wealth of the 

 country. 



OUR FARMS AND FARMERS THE BEST IN 

 THE WORED 



No nation in the world has an agricul- 

 tural territory with a greater range of 

 climatic conditions than the United States 

 and its possessions. Great Britain, "on 

 whose flag the sun never sets," has her 

 colonies scattered through all the pos- 

 sible ranges of climate, but America has 

 in one great connected area a territory 

 that is exposed in its north to a tempera- 

 ture of fifty degrees below zero in winter 

 and whose southern tip juts out into the 

 zone of perpetual warmth. 



This great farm land is peopled from 

 one end to the other with pioneers; not 

 with peasants whose fathers and grand- 

 fathers were peasants and who follow 

 blindly in the footsteps of their fore- 

 fathers, but with men who have the spirit 

 of change in them and who are looking 

 for anything that will pay better than 

 what they already have. These pioneers, 

 through the daily press and by means of 

 the rural free delivery, are keeping in 

 touch with the plant industries all over 

 the world. They know what the wheat 

 crop of the Argentine is likely to be, and 

 whether Russia's output of this grain will 

 affect the price of the wheat in their 

 stacks. They see accounts of plant cul- 

 tures in other lands that they would like 

 to try in their own fields or gardens, and 

 they have the time and the money and 

 the land necessary; but they cannot get 

 the seeds or plants to experiment with, 

 nor do the papers tell enough to enable 

 them to judge whether there is any 

 chance of successfully growing these 

 strange crops on their land. 



"new things To grow" 



Millions of dollars are waiting to be 

 invested in these new crops, and hun- 

 dreds of thousands of private experi- 

 menters are ready to try new things. 



