Our Plant Immigrants 



A flood of emigration has set in from 

 our great cities to the country, and the 

 emigrants are not poor people, nor 

 ignorant, but are in large part the 

 wealthy and intelligent, few of whom 

 are willing to follow in the old ways of 

 farming and gardening. They want 

 something new to grow, not always be- 

 cause they think it will be more profit- 

 able, but because they will get more 

 amusement out of it. To manage a 

 farm and make it pay along the old 

 lines is indeed a great accomplishment, 

 but to take up something entirely new 

 and prove that it will grow and be 

 profitable gives the same kind of pleas- 

 ure that always comes to one who 

 makes two blades of grass grow where 

 one grew before. It is the keen pleas- 

 ure of discovery, the old pioneer spirit, 

 that is turning from the creating of 

 new business projects into new fields 

 of agriculture. These are the new con- 

 ditions in American agriculture that 

 must be met by new means, and the 

 Department of Agriculture, through 

 the Office of Seed and Plant Introduc- 

 tion, is striving to meet these demands. 

 This office, with its small appropriation 

 of $40,000 a year for the introduction 

 of foreign plants, is getting seeds and 

 plants from the most remote corners of 

 the world for thousands of private ex- 

 perimenters and for the state experi- 

 ment stations of the country. Over a 

 dozen new things a day are entered on 

 the list of new arrivals, and these new 

 seeds or plants arrive by mail, express, 

 and freight, in quantities varying from 

 a single cutting in a tin tube to a ton 

 of seed of some African or Arabian 

 grain. 



These things are not sent broadcast 

 over the country; they cannot be had 

 merely for the asking. Each new ship- 

 ment represents a well-thought-out 

 problem, for which some preparation 

 has been made, and the seed is too val- 

 uable to be wasted by putting it in the 

 hands of those who want it merely 

 because it costs nothing, or who live 

 in a region which the meteorological 



data in the office excludes from consid- 

 eration as a place where the new plant 

 is likely to find a congenial home. The 

 new arrival goes out to some experi- 

 ment station or to some one who has 

 satisfied the office that he has the nec- 

 essary means to take care of it and the 

 soil and climate in which it will be 

 likely to grow — to experimenters, in 

 other words, who have demonstrated 

 their ability to try new plants. These 

 are chosen from the organized insti- 

 tutes of research in each state and by 

 correspondence with private individ- 

 uals. 



AGRICULTURAL EXPLORERS 



The securing of these things from 

 the ends of the earth is a work that has 

 required the employment of exceptional 

 men, whose enthusiasm for discovery 

 would take them into dangerous places 

 and whose training had fitted them to 

 tell at a glance whether there was in a 

 new plant the possibility of its utiliza- 

 tion in this country. These men have 

 been botanists in the main, but not col- 

 lectors of dried plants. They have 

 been investigators of new crop possi- 

 bilities, and have kept always in view 

 the fact that what the country wants is 

 something that will grow and be profit- 

 able. The finding of a new species did 

 not distract them from the object of 

 their search, which was to find the 

 plant, whether new to science or not, 

 that was wanted for the improvement 

 of an existing industry or the estab- 

 lishment of a new one. 



The ground covered by these agri- 

 cultural explorers has been great, and 

 in this work of exploration the office 

 has been most fortunate in enlisting 

 the personal support of America's 

 greatest traveler, Mr Barbour Lath- 

 rop, of Chicago. Mr Lathrop, at his 

 own expense, conducted his explora- 

 tions for nearly six years into most of 

 the promising plant-growing regions of 

 the world, taking the writer with him 

 in all his travels as his expert. With 

 the host of correspondents established 



