A HUNTER OF PLANTS 



69 



From Kang-ko, Ko- 

 rea, he sent this pic- 

 ture of customs and 

 costumes : 



"This Korean coun- 

 try is totally different 

 from any other in the 

 world. The people, 

 for instance, are all 

 dressed in white — 

 some clean, most of 

 them not, but still all 

 are in white. In 

 their houses the whole 

 floor is heated, in 

 most of them the year 

 round. The entrances 

 to the rooms are like 

 windows, so small 

 that one virtually has 

 to crawl in. 



"The food is totally 

 different, too. Rice 

 is the national food, 

 and mostly it is a poor 

 quality of red grain, 

 boiled with some 

 beans. Cucumbers 

 are the most favored 

 vegetable, and at one 

 meal one gets them 

 prepared in three or 

 four ways — cucumber 

 soup, salted cucum- 

 ber, fresh sliced cu- 

 cumber, and cucum- 

 ber water. From a 

 baby who is hardly 

 able to walk, up to the 

 old gray-haired men, 

 everybody eats cu- 

 cumbers, and prefer- 

 ably unpeeled. 



"Tea is unknown here ; so the national 

 drink is water. But now we come to a 

 most interesting fact — they consume all 

 their food and drinks out of brass bowls 

 and cups ; and there seems to be very 

 little digestive trouble. How these peo- 

 ple have come to learn the fact that 

 copper is a good preventive for alimen- 

 tary complaints would be worth finding 

 out. 



"Koreans all dress in clothes made of 

 hemp fiber, and the material is hand- 

 woven. Even their sandals are made out 



THE TAMOPAN PERSIMMON AS IT FRUITS IN CALIFORNIA 



This Oriental persimmon which Frank Meyer introduced into 

 America is worthy of the widest consumption. The fruits in the 

 photograph, which were raised in California at the government plant- 

 introduction garden, are three and and a half inches across and are 

 seedless. They are of a deep orange color, with a characteristic deep 

 groove around them, and when properly ripened they are delicious. 



of the same fabric. The hemp is cut 

 young, just before it comes to bloom, and 

 the stems are placed in a closed clay oven 

 and heated for some days. Then the 

 bark comes off easily and with a little 

 washing the fiber is ready to be dried and 

 used. 



"The main crops here in the north are 

 sorghum in some varieties, small millets, 

 wet rice, different varieties of soy-beans, 

 maize, and buckwheat. The vegetables 

 are cucumbers, pumpkins, chili peppers, 

 onions, and a poor, weedy cabbage. Gar- 



