Miscellaneous. 



244 



IMarch 1908. 



ducing of hardy fruits into the North- 

 west ; the substituting of a valuable for 

 a worthless cane in the eane brakes of 

 the South ; and the exploiting of a 

 drouth-resistant nut plant for Cali- 

 fornia. 



The planters of the Carolinas must 

 have a new crop to grow on the rich 

 rice lands that are no longer profitable 

 for rice culture since the great Louisiana 

 and Texas rice fields have been opened 

 up. The Office of Plant Introduction 

 has suggested the trial of the Japanese 

 matting rush as likely to be a pro- 

 fitable one on these areas ; and is plant- 

 ing thousands of seedlings of the plant, 

 and watching them carefully to see how 

 exj^ensive their cultivation will be. It 

 is also experimenting with a new root 

 crop on the cheap sandy lands of the 

 region as a possible substitute for the 

 Irish potato, which will not grow on 

 that soil. 



There are also thousands of unem" 

 ployed acres of hilly lands in the Caro" 

 Unas where the conditions are good for 

 the culture of the Japanese plant from 

 which the finest writing paper in the 

 world is made, and the Office has intro- 

 duced and planted there thousands of 

 these plants to see if they will not 

 develop into an industry which will 

 utilize these great waste areas. 



The barley growers of the country are 

 growing millions of bushels of grain for 

 the brewers, but among the hosts of 

 so-called varieties that are recognized on 

 the grain markets not one is a pure race 

 or breed. The Swedes have long since 

 found the use of pure barleys of great 

 advantage to the brewers, and their 

 plant-breeders have created pure types. 

 The Department has imported these, 

 and they are now on extensive trial by 

 the best barley -growers in the country. 



Alaska, with its cool, short summeis 

 and extremely cold, long winters offers 

 new problems for Plant Introduction. 

 The crops cultivated by the farmers of 

 the great plains are accustomed to a long, 

 hot summer, and when tried in Alaska 

 they are caught by the early autumn 

 frosts before they are half ripe. To 

 meet these new conditions, Norway, 

 Sweden, and Finland have been drawn 

 upon for grains and vegetables, and the 

 most successsful oats grown in Alaska 

 to-day are the Finnish black oats that 

 were introduced by the Office of Plant 

 Introduction. 



For the tropical regions of Porto Rico, 

 Hawaii, the Philippines, and the Panama 

 Canal Zone, there are hosts of new possi- 

 bilities open. The sisal fibre importa- 

 tions from Mexico costs this country 



over $16,000,000 a year, and we propose 

 to demonstrate on a practical scale that 

 the sisal plant will grow in Porto Rico 

 and suppiy a share, at least, of the thou- 

 sands of miles of binding twine which 

 the Western farmers use in their harvest 

 fields. 



There are a host of new fruits which 

 are common in the oriental tropics and 

 which would quickly win their way to 

 popular favour on our markets, waiting 

 to be brought in and made into thriving 

 industries. To run-down coffee varieties 

 need new strains to invigorate them, 

 and it is a possibility that the wild 

 coffees of Abyssinia which Consul Skin- 

 ner has secured for the Department will 

 bring this about. There are new root 

 crops like the taro, the yautia, and the 

 tropical yam that are almost unexplored, 

 so far as their possibilities as food for the 

 white man are concerned, and whose 

 excellent qualities and remarkable yields 

 put them in the same rank with the 

 potato. 



THE CURIOUS PROPERTIES OF THE 

 FENUGREEK. 



The great fruit-growers of the Pacific 

 slope, with their thousands of acres of 

 clean tilled orchards, have been search- 

 ing for a cover crop that would increase 

 the fertility of their lands and add the 

 necessary humus or vegetable matter to 

 it. We have found this for them in the 

 shape of leguminous plant that inhabits 

 the Mediterranean region — the fenu- 

 greek. The seeds of this plant, curi- 

 ously enough, are eaten by the Jewish 

 women of Tunis in order to make them 

 fat, and no young Jew in that region 

 could think of marrying a girl until the 

 use of this grain had increased her 

 weight to the fashionable figure of 250 or 

 300 pounds. The seeds form a part of 

 the expensive condition powders that 

 stock-men use to prepare their stock for 

 the fat-stock shows, and it was for this 

 purpose that our explorers introduced it 

 in the first place. 



For the great North-west, where fruit 

 trees are killed every winter and none 

 but the hardiest kinds will grow, the 

 explorers have brought in from Russia 

 the hardy Vladimir cherry and forms of 

 the Siberian crab apple, with the hope 

 of at least starting some types of fruit 

 that will be hardy there. 



The "cane breaks" of the Southern 

 States are thickest of an American bam- 

 boo whose stems are so brittle that they 

 are worthless in arts. Shipments of the 

 Japanese timber bamboo, from which the 

 thousand and one beautiful Japanese 

 things are made, have been imported 

 and are being tried in those areas to see 



