A HUNTER OF PLANTS 



/o 



or more years, the Yang tao will do well, 

 and of course in many parts of California 

 it should thrive, too. 



CUT OF? FROM COMMUNICATION WITH 

 THE WORLD 



"I wonder whether these parcels will 

 ever reach you ! I have not received mail 

 now for a few months. Conditions here 

 are as upset as ever ; travel is nearly im- 

 possible, except by an occasional Japan- 

 ese steamer. Food supplies are running 

 low, fighting has occurred near and 

 around the city almost hourly during these 

 last weeks, and everybody feels de- 

 pressed from this long-drawn state of 

 suspense. 



"The foreigners here have formed a 

 defense committee, but, of course, a mere 

 handful of white residents can do noth- 

 ing against brigands in uniform, as nearly 

 all of these Chinese soldiers are, and there 

 are several thousands of the parasites 

 around us. Last week I saw that some of 

 these fellows took the hearts out of men 

 whom they had shot, and mutilated the 

 corpses in unspeakable ways. They are 

 going to eat these hearts to get courage ! 



"Of late I have been assisting many of 

 the foreign residents in changing their 

 gardens and transplanting large and small 

 trees. It took twenty-five coolies to re- 

 move one large tea olive — a thing never 

 before attempted in Ichang. Should all 

 of these various trees pull through, my 

 work will be tied up with this city for a 

 hundred years to come." 



SOME OF MEYFR'S GIFTS TO AMERICA 



It would be inappropriate here to give a 

 complete list of the hundreds of plant spe- 

 cies and varieties which Meyer sent into 

 this country. But when the roses bloom 

 in New England, his Rosa xanthina] 

 the hardiest of the yellow bush-roses, will 

 be a mass of pale gold. When the ground 

 thaws on the bleak plains of the Dakotas, 

 thousands of his Chinese elms will put out 

 their leaves and take their place in the 

 wind-breaks of that treeless region. All 

 the way up from Florida and Georgia 

 and over the Canadian border this elm 

 is now growing — a remarkably adaptable 

 tree. 



His ash from Kashgar will spread its 

 branches over the alkali soils of Nevada. 



When cherries are ripe in California, his 

 Tangsi cherry will be the earliest to ripen 

 by a week or ten days. 



The peach-growers of California are 

 watching orchards now five years old, the 

 trees of which all have for their root sys- 

 tems those of a wild Chinese peach which 

 is resistant to drouth and alkali and 

 which Meyer found was in common use 

 as a stock by the Chinese. 



As the autumn peaches ripen, the trees 

 of the Fei peach will attract unusual at- 

 tention, for it is the pound peach of the 

 Shantung Province and bids fair to take 

 a special place among the canning peaches 

 of this country. It was so rare a variety, 

 and living peach budwood is so hard to 

 ship, that Meyer had to make two long 

 special trips of several weeks on foot to 

 get it. 



In parks and cemeteries, wherever it 

 will grow well, the globular-headed wil- 

 low deserves to find a place, and the first 

 specimens, now growing at Chico, Cal- 

 ifornia, and on the banks of Rock Creek 

 Park, in Washington, D. C, are worthy 

 of a special visit. 



THE DELICIOUS JUJUBE 



The curse of pear-growers is the fire 

 blight, which often ruins the growth of 

 years in a single season by killing the 

 twigs and branches and even the trunk 

 of the tree. Just how far the hardy 

 Ussurian pear, sent to us by Meyer, will 

 prove to be immune to this disease we do 

 not yet know ; but Professor Reimer, of 

 Oregon, who is an authority on the sub- 

 ject, declares it is the most resistant of all 

 the species of the pear genus. 



Until Meyer brought back the grafted 

 varieties of the Chinese jujube and we 

 planted an orchard of them in California, 

 the name itself recalled only the jujube 

 paste of our fathers' time, which was 

 used for coughs and colds. It bore no 

 relation to the fruits, as large as good- 

 sized plums, which, when processed, are 

 as delicious as Persian Gulf dates (p. 74V 



When the boys and girls go chestnut- 

 ting and see with growing concern that 

 their favorite chestnut trees are dying 

 and realize that unless we do something 

 theirs may be the last generation to have 

 the pleasure of gathering these most in- 

 teresting of all nuts, it may be a comfort 



