Miscellaneous, 



240 



[March 1908. 



duced a salad with a distinct flavour of 

 its own, a crispness that was unusual, 

 and a pretty silvery appearance. It was 

 found to be a most vigorous grower, 

 resembling a soft wooded shrub more 

 than anything. The methods of its 

 culture were worked out, and seeds were 

 obtained and distributed to hundreds 

 of private experimenters scattered from 

 Nova Scotia to California and from 

 Maine to Florida, and the result has 

 been that shoots suitable for the table 

 have been produced in a dozen places, 

 chiefly on the Atlantic coast. It has 

 grown almost if not quite as well in 

 Washington as in Japan, and has shown 

 itself a heavy yielder. Seedlings have in 

 one year produced astonishing masses 

 of roots, from which quantities of the 

 blanched shoots have been grown in a 

 dark chamber or under a mound of 

 earth. 



THE TROPICAL MANGO. 



Many people think they know what 

 mangoes taste like, because they have 

 eaten some fruit by that name sold in 

 one of the fruit stores of our cities. The 

 fruits that are offered now as mangoes 

 are unworthy the name, for they are 

 from worthless seedling trees and are 

 little more than juicy balls of fibres 

 saturated in turpentine, while the 

 oriental mango is a fruit fit to set before 

 a king. It is in fact more richly flavored 

 than a peach and has no more fibre. 

 The trees grow on poor soil and attain 

 an extreme old age. They bear enor- 

 mous crops of fruit that make the trees 

 look when in full beariug as though they 

 were covered with a mass of gold. 



The first introduction of the East 

 Indian Mulgoba mango was made into 

 Florida by the Office of Pomology in 

 1889. From the one tree of the early 

 introduction which survived the freeze 

 of 1895 has come the new mango craze 

 that is now at its height among the 

 Florida planters who have suitable soil 

 and no frosts or only slight ones. When 

 this tree, saved from destruction by 

 Professor Elbridge Gale, of Mangonia, 

 came into fruit it was a revelation to 

 America — to the Western Tropics in fact. 

 From this one tree thousands of grafted 

 trees are now growing in Florida, and it 

 will not be long before the mulgoba is 

 for sale on our markets. To meet the 

 demand for the best mangoes in the 

 world, the office has brought young 

 plants of the best varieties from every 

 region where they are grown, and there 

 is now assembled in the green-houses of 

 the department the largest and the best 

 selected collection of mangoes in the 

 world. These are being fruited in 

 Florida, and the best will be propagated 

 as rapidly as possible for distribution. 



SPANISH HARD-SHELLED ALMONDS. 

 The Sierras of south-eastern Spain pro- 

 duce most of the long, slender kernelled 

 almonds which have come so rapidly 

 into favour for salted almonds. Cali- 

 fornia could produce tnem, as she al- 

 ready grows the poorest kinds, the soft- 

 shelled, coarser-flavoured sorts. To get 

 these finer kinds — the famous Jordan 

 especially — the writer explored the 

 almond orchards of Malaga and Anda- 

 lusia, and cut scions or grafting wood 

 from the best trees ; much of this 

 material has been used in California 

 with success, but the Jordan flowers too 

 early, and another expedition must be 

 made in search of later flowering kinds 

 from the same region to make the hard- 

 shelled type a success, or else new regions 

 must be found in this country where the 

 Jordan will not be caught by the late 

 spring frosts. 



BERSEEM, THE EGYPTIAN CLOVER. 



The greatest annual irrigated forage 

 crop for culture in regions with mild win- 

 ters is the berseem of the Nile Valley. It 

 is the crop that the Egyptian fellah, or 

 peasant, has depended upon for centuries 

 as a soil improver and a,s a plant on 

 which to pasture his cattle and other 

 animals of the farm. Planted in the 

 late autumn, it grows so rapidly that 

 before the next June it will yield four 

 cuttings of a most nutritious fodder that 

 may be pastured upon, fed green, or 

 made into hay. No other plant known 

 should be so well suited to grow in those 

 newly-opened up, irrigated regions of 

 Arizona and California whenever the 

 settlers learn to grow high-priced annual 

 crops instead of alfalfa, which is the 

 main plant industry in that region now. 

 Berseem will not come into competition 

 with alfalfa, for it is an annual, while 

 alfalfa is a perennial, and therefore not 

 suited to grow in rotation with crops like 

 cotton, melons, or other annuals. The 

 trials so far made with berseem are en- 

 couraging, and the plant has seeded at 

 various places in California, and acre 

 plots of it have been grown. 



THE DATE PALM INDUSTRY. 



The transfer from the great deserts of 

 the old world to those of the new of the 

 unique date industry is an accomplish- 

 ment of which the Government may well 

 be proud. It is something that private 

 enterprise would not have undertaken 

 for decades to come, and the name of 

 Mr. Walter T. Swingle will be always 

 associated with this new industry. 

 Though the attention of the public was 

 first attracted to the possibilities of 

 growing the foreign date palm in this 

 country through chance seedlings that 

 bore fruit, and through an early intro- 



