The Farmers of the United States 



43 



whose gardens now yield from eight to 

 ten thousand pounds of tea annually. 

 The work of establishing a plantation 

 in Texas has also been continued. En- 

 couraging results have also been secured 

 in the establishment of the African date 

 in Arizona and California. 



POPPY ALKALOIDS 



In Vermont previous success in grow- 

 ing opium poppies has been repeated 

 with even better results. The attempt 

 to cultivate this plant has been made 

 with a view to supplying our demand 

 for poppy alkaloids for medicinal uses. 

 As the result of the repeated experi- 

 ments, success has at last attended the 

 effort to obtain morphine directly from 

 the juices of the plant. If this can be 

 done commercially, the plants produced 

 in American fields will replace oriental 

 opium as a crude source for morphine. 



CULTURAL WORK ON COTTON 



Special work has been done on cotton 

 with a view to bringing home to farmers 

 of Texas and Louisiana, especially in 

 the boll-weevil districts, the advantages 

 of better methods of cultivation and the 

 value of early maturing seed. 



The Bureau of Plant Industry has 

 had the advantage of closest cooperation 

 with the Texas Agricultural College, 

 and also with the Louisiana authorities. 

 As a feature of the work in the South, 

 diversification farms were established at 

 various places with a view to showing 

 the value and importance of diversified 

 agriculture. The business interests in 

 the respective communities gladly co- 

 operate in this matter with the Bureau, 

 so that they involve but a trifling ex- 

 pense to the government. Thirty-two 

 of these farms have been or are about 

 to be established. Extensive work has 

 been inaugurated in Texas with a view 

 to breeding new types of cotton better 

 adapted to meet the conditions brought 

 about by the invasion of the cotton boll 

 weevil. Reference is made to the dis- 



covery of the Guatemalan ant by an 

 officer of the Bureau, and to the trans- 

 fer of the study and distribution of this 

 ant to the Bureau of Entomology. Men- 

 tion is also made of an effort to combat 

 the boll weevil by producing a variety 

 of cotton not subject to injury by this 

 pest. 



The Secretary believes it to be within 

 the range of possibility that resistant 

 varieties of cotton may be found in 

 tropical America or developed by selec- 

 tion. As a feature of the work in Texas, 

 a special effort has been made to obtain 

 information as to the best methods of 

 combating the cotton root rot, a disease 

 which has been very serious the past 

 season. 



FORAGE CROP INVESTIGATIONS 



More attention has been given to al- 

 falfa in the eastern half of the United 

 States in the past two years than to any 

 other crop. The department has dem- 

 onstrated that this valuable crop can be 

 grown in almost every state in the 

 Union. A large amount of information 

 has been gathered the past year as to the 

 carrying capacity of the ranges in vari- 

 ous parts of the West. Intelligent man- 

 agement will bring the ranges back to 

 their primitivs state of productiveness, 

 but there is no chance of improving 

 range conditions except where stockmen 

 are able to control the ranges upon 

 which their stock feed. It has also been 

 demonstrated that many new plants may 

 be introduced upon the range success- 

 fully. Plants that may be grown upon 

 alkali lands have been studied. 



INVESTIGATIONS OF STANDARD 

 GRASSES 



Investigations of standard grasses have 

 been carried on, and it is hoped that 

 within a few years it will be possible to 

 offer farmers small quantities of seed of 

 improved forms of all the standard 

 grasses. A considerable number of na- 

 tive American grasses have shown them- 



