82 



The National Geographic Magazine 



during these long voyages and those 

 made by the various agricultural ex- 

 plorers that the office itself has kept in 

 the field, the machinery of getting new 

 plants is better organized in this office 

 than anywhere else in the world. We 

 have traversed the Russian steppes and 

 entered Turkestan ; we have scoured 

 the coast of North Africa from the Suez 



MonutnentinChurchyardof Fukushoji, Province 

 of Kii, Japan, erected as a memorial to the man 

 who first introduced citrus fruits into Japan 

 i,8co years ago. His name was Ta jima Mori, 

 and he was sent to China by Imperial order 

 to obtain the citrus fruits. It took him 

 nine years to secure the plants for intro- 

 duction. The monument bearsthefol- 

 lowing inscription : "How Magnifi- 

 cent is the Result of Tajis' Work " 



Canal to Morocco, visiting oases in 

 which -no white man has been for 

 twenty-five years ; we have investigated 

 the industries of Italy, Greece, and 

 Austro-Hungary ; the Valley of the 

 Nile, with its host of irrigated crops, 

 has been given a thorough study; 

 Japan, with its peculiar and suggestive 

 agriculture, has been drawn upon by 



our explorers ; India and the Dutch 

 East Indies, with their wealth of ma- 

 terial of value for the warmer portions 

 of the country, have been touched, but 

 not yet explored ; Arabian date regions 

 have been visited and their possibilities 

 exploited ; South America has been 

 given a short visit of reconnaissance; 

 and East Africa, Cape Colony, and the 

 Transvaal, Sweden, and Finland have 

 been visited but not explored. The 

 almost unlimited plant resources of the 

 Chinese Kingdom are being probed by 

 a trained agricultural explorer, Mr 

 Erank N. Myer. Hosts of things are 

 coming in from his explorations that 

 we are not yet in a position to talk 

 about,, since few of them have left the 

 cool chambers in which they will re- 

 main until planting time, in the spring. 

 Hardier persimmons and peaches from 

 the original home of the peach, interest- 

 ing new grapes, luscious Chinese pears, 

 and hardy bamboos are on the long list 

 of things already en route to America. 



A glance at the great plant industries 

 of this country shows that they have 

 nearly all of them been influenced in 

 the past and are still being changed and 

 bettered by the introduction of new 

 plants. 



ths durum wheat industry 



The durum wheat, from which the 

 bread of the common people is made 

 in Southern Europe and Russia, was 

 almost an unknown thing on our grain 

 markets until 1900; but today it is a liv- 

 ing question in the milling centers of 

 the Northwest. It is a wheat for the 

 dry lands, where the ordinary kinds 

 grow poorly or not at all, and it yields 

 so much more per acre and is so much 

 surer a crop that, even if it should not 

 bring the highest prices, it will pay bet- 

 ter than the less drouth-resistant spe- 

 cies which Western farmers have hith- 

 erto tried to grow on the dry farm lands 

 of the Dakotas and Nebraska. 



Custom still fights the innovation of 

 a new flour, and there are people who 

 think our bread is in danger of being 



