8 SEEDS AHD PLANTS IMPORTED. 



crop experts of the Department of Agriculture. They are the mos 

 interesting of more than a hundred and seventy things brought b] 

 Professor Hansen from Siberia, though others worthy of mentioi 

 here are a number of durum wheats; remarkable winter muskmelon 

 (some of them weighing 30 to 40 pounds and capable of keeping 

 winter, promising possibilities for the Southwest) ; the Persian clove 

 shaftal or "Shabdar" (No. 24548), now being tried for the irrigatec 

 Southwest; and sand binders (Nos. 24555, 24556, 24557, 24558, anc 

 24559) used along the Transcaspian Railway. 



Numbers 24759 to 24761 represent the largest importation c 

 bamboo plants ever brought into the country, comprising more tha: 

 3,000 good-sized plants of the three timber species that are grown sc 

 extensively in Japan — two of them for timber and one also for its 

 edible shoots. These were purchased by an agent from the Japanese 

 farmers near Nagasaki and brought over by the courtesy of the War I 

 Department on an army transport. They have made a satisfactor} T J 

 start at Chico, Cal., and will be planted in the South and in California 

 this autumn. An effort will be made to show what a wonderfully 

 beautiful thing a bamboo grove is, and to bring this unique timber 

 material near enough so that our experimenters can study the 

 methods of its utilization in the fresh state. 



Of the introductions secured through correspondence, special atten- 

 tion should be called to the following: 



Of interest to the fruit growers will be the three Javanese fruits — the 

 Doekoe (No. 24431), the Ramboetan (No. 25163), and the Poelasan 

 (No. 25164) — delicious East Indian fruits that seem to have not yet 

 attracted attention in the West Indies; a South China relative of the 

 orange (Atalantia bilocularis) for breeding purposes; the Indian bael 

 fruit (No. 24450), which is prized for sherbets by Occidentals, but 

 esteemed as highly as the orange by the East Indians, and its near rela- 

 tive from the Philippines, Belou glutinosa (No. 24591), both of which 

 Mr. Swingle suggests should be used in breeding new types of citrus 

 fruits ; the edible passion fruit of Mexico, a much neglected fruit possi- 

 bility for the Southwest; Diospyros ebenaster, the Zapote Prieto of 

 Mexico (No. 24600), a relative of the persimmon; a new fine-flavored 

 mango, with fruit the size of an English walnut, from Tahiti ; strains of 

 the Chilean strawberry (Nos. 24654-24656) ; five varieties of Chilean 

 anonas (Nos. 24661-24665) ; the Legrellei pomegranate (No. 24825) 

 from Switzerland, an unusually hardy form which matures its fruit in 

 Paris; a collection of valuable pomegranates from Bagdad, Arabia 

 (Nos. 25001-25007); two southern China peaches from Canton (Nos. 

 24915-24916) ; the cherry stock used by the Japanese and upon which 

 they bench-graft all their ornamental flowering cherries and which 

 seems not to have been tried for a stock for our fruiting cherries (No. 



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