Miscellaneous. 



236 



[March 1908. 



acres of the best tilled olive orchards in 

 the world. A few orange cuttings from 

 the east coast of Brazil, called to the 

 attention of the world by an American 

 woman, have grown until they number 

 their descendants by millions and form 

 what is one of the characteristic features 

 of California— its orange groves. 



The tomato, which before the war was 

 a curiosity from Peru and was used to 

 frighten slaves into obedience, because 

 they thought it poisonous, was grown 

 last year on over half a million acres of 

 garden land. 



The lima bean, whose arrival in this 

 country no historian has considered 

 worthy of chronicling, has so grown in 

 importance since its introduction, some 

 time about 1820, that to-day special 

 freight rates are granted it between 

 Southern California and the Atlantic 

 coast, and thousands of acres of land are 

 devoted almost exclusively to the culti- 

 vatian of this Peruvian bean. 



The potato, from the highlands of 

 Colombia and Peru ; the rhubarb, from 

 Central Asia; the asparagus, from Eng- 

 land ; and even the celery of Southern 

 Europe, have all been, one after the 

 other, introduced into our fields and 

 gardens. 



Though these great changes in the 

 farm and garden areas of the country 

 have been wrought in less than a life- 

 time, they have still been too slow, and 

 to-day changes as far-reaching and im- 

 portant as the introduction of the olive 

 or the orange are being brought about 

 by Government aid in a surprisingly 

 short time. 



The Department of Agriculture is 

 growing in this country some of the 

 things that we now import and for 

 which we pay annually many millions of 

 dollars ; it is forcing: into public notice 

 and encouraging the trial of foods that 

 the people of other countries find ex- 

 cellent, and of which we are ignorant ; 

 and it is bringing in from all parts of the 

 world plants that are now wild, but that 

 can be tamed by breeding with others 

 now in cultivation, thus contributing to 

 the creation of fruits and vegetables that 

 the world has never seen before. 



This is the Government enterprise of 

 Plant Introduction — to introduce and 

 establish in America as many of the 

 valuable crops of the world as can be 

 grown here ; to educate the farmer in 

 their culture and the public in their 

 use ; to increase by this, one of the most 

 powerful means, the agricultural wealth 

 of the country. 



OUR FARMS AND FARMERS THE BEST IN 

 THE WORLD, 



No nation in the world has an agri- 

 cultural territory with a greater range 

 of climatic conditions than the United 

 States and its possessions. Great Britain, 

 "on whose flag the sun never sets," has 

 her Colonies scattered through all the 

 possible ranges of climate, but America 

 has in one great connected area a terri- 

 tory that is exposed in its north to a 

 temperature of fifty degrees below zero 

 in winter and whose southern tip juts 

 out into the zone of perpetual warmth. 



This great farm land is peopled from 

 one end to the other with pioneers ; not 

 with peasants whose fathers and grand- 

 fathers were peasants and who follow 

 blindly in the footsteps of their fore- 

 fathers, but with men who have the 

 spirit of change in them and who are 

 looking for anything that will pay 

 better than what they already have. 

 These pioneers, through the daily press 

 and by means of the rural free delivery, 

 are keeping in touch with the plant 

 industries all over the world. They 

 know what the wheat crop of the 

 Argentine is likely to be, and whether 

 Russia's output of this grain will affect 

 the price of the wheat in their stacks. 

 They see accounts of plant cultures in 

 other lands that they would like to try 

 in their own fields or gardens, and they 

 have the time and the money and the 

 land necessary ; but they cannot get 

 the seeds or plants to experiment with, 

 nor dc the papers tell enough to enable 

 them to judge whether there is any 

 chance of successfully growing these 

 strange crops on their laud. 



" NEW THINGS TO GROW." 



Millions of dollars are waiting to be 

 invested in these new crops, and hun- 

 dreds of thousands of private experi- 

 menters are ready to try new things. 

 A flood of emigration has set in 

 from our great cities to the country, 

 and the emigrants are not poor 

 people, nor ignorant, but are in large 

 part the wealthy and intelligent, few of 

 whom are willing to follow in the old 

 ways of farming and gardening. They 

 want something new to grow, not always 

 because they think it will be more pro- 

 fitable, but because they will get more 

 amusement out of it. To manage a farm 

 and make it pay along the old lines is 

 indeed a great accomplishment, but to 

 take up something entirely new aud 

 prove that it will grow and be profitable 

 gives the same kind of pleasure that 

 always comes to one who makes two 

 blades of grass grow where one giew 

 before. It is the keen pleasure of dis- 

 covery, the old pioneer spirit, that is 



