Our Plant Immigrants 



i8 3 



deteriorated by the new introduction ; 

 but they are not the well informed who 

 have tasted the full-flavored durum 

 wheat breads of Spain or Italy or who 

 realize the great and growing future of 

 macaroni as a food in this country. 

 American-made macaroni, prepared 

 with the best of the old American 

 wheats, cannot be compared with the 

 delicate product of a Gragnano factory. 

 But with the culture of this durum 

 wheat in America a change is coming, 

 and the time may come when we shall 

 ship macaroni to Italy instead of im- 

 porting it at the rate of nearly 

 $2,000,000 worth a year. This innova- 

 tion in the great wheat industry has 

 been the result of the efforts of Mr 

 M. A. Carleton, who was sent to Russia 

 as an agricultural explorer of the Office 

 of Plant Introduction in 1898 and 1900. 

 The office has distributed thousands of 

 bushels of the durum wheat varieties 

 gathered by him from all the Mediter- 

 ranean and South Russian countries 

 where it is grown. 



THE; SMYRNA FIG 



One of the most fascinating events in 

 the history of plant introduction was the 

 introduction of the Smyrna fig industry. 

 The Smyrna fig has always been consid- 

 ered the finest fig in the world, and be- 

 yond all competition ; so it was natural 

 that progressive Californians should wish 

 to see if they could not grow it. Or- 

 chards were accordingly started in 1880. 

 They grew well, but the crops of fruit 

 they bore fell to the ground when quite 

 green, and it was evident that some- 

 thing was lacking to make the industry a 

 success. A study of fig culture in Smyrna 

 was made, and it was discovered that a 

 process called caprificatiou was necessary. 

 This consisted in hanging in the trees of 

 the true Smyrna fig the young fruits of 

 another variety of figs that are not edible, 

 but which contain thousands of micro- 

 scopic wasp-like insects, called Blasto- 

 phaga. These insects creep out of the 

 caprifigs just at the time when the 

 Smyrna figs are in bloom, and, crawling 



into the latter, they fertilize the hundreds 

 of small flowers of which the fig is com- 

 posed, and instead of dropping off like 

 unfertilized flowers, the Smyrna figs 

 grow and ripen. 



The caprifigs were accordingly im- 

 ported as cuttings, but again the owner 

 was disappointed when the trees bore, for 

 it was discovered that they had left their 

 tiny insects behind and were worthless. 

 A final attempt was made through the 

 combined efforts of the entomologist of 

 the Department of Agriculture and Mr 

 W. T. Swingle, of the Bureau of Plant 

 Industry, and, in 1899, after nineteen 

 years of effort, Mr Roding's orchard of 

 Smyrna figs was established. It is still 

 the largest in this country and has been 

 yielding large crops of delicious fruit. 

 Sixty-five tons was the output for 1903, 

 and though in its infancy the California 

 Smyrna fig industry is already supplying 

 a portion of the figs now sold in our 

 markets, and these are being put up with 

 a cleanliness unknown in their native 

 land. 



Japanese; rice; 



History tells us that the first rice in this 

 country was introduced into the Carolinas 

 in 1695 by the captain of a brig from 

 Madagascar, who gave some seed to 

 Governor Smith and his friends to ex- 

 periment with, and the result has been an 

 important industry. The rices which 

 chance introduction had brought in were 

 looked upon as the finest in quality in 

 the world and were exported to Europe; 

 but with the call for a whiter and a more 

 polished product than the hand-threshed 

 rice of plantation days came machine- 

 polished rice, and the center of the rice 

 industry was transferred to Louisiana 

 and Texas by the discovery of artesian 

 wells in those states. The machine- 

 polished rice that we buy in this country 

 today is, as every one knows, a truly 

 beautiful thing to look at, but as tasteless 

 as the paste that a paperhanger brushes 

 on his rolls of wall paper. The leather 

 rollers of the machine not only rub 

 off all the fine outer layer of nutritious 



