86 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



water-logged flats, and dense thicket growths. The enlistment of a 

 considerable proportion of these wasted areas to do their share in 

 the world's economy may eventually be absolutely necessary to the 

 human race. Encouragement is given to the possibility of finding 

 plants of industrial value suited to these areas by the fact that many 

 of them already maintain vegetation of a sort which may provide 

 the basis of evolution. 



Many unpromising areas have already been brought into use by 

 the discovery of particular plants which grow under existing con- 

 ditions or by the introduction of plants which flourish when freed 

 from the strangling competition of other plants on more fertile soil. 



We are familiar with the bleak downs in Sussex, where on two 

 or three inches of soil, in which nothing else of value does much good, 

 the shallow-rooting sheep's-fescue makes possible a famous industry 

 in sheep-breeding. Similar cases occur elsewhere in Great Britain. 

 Then there are expanses by the sea-side, where barren wastes of 

 loose sand are raised several feet high by one wind and laid flat by 

 another. These areas are being fixed and made stable by the aid 

 of the valuable marram-grass, and the land is consequently rendered 

 suitable for the growth of trees. A good object-lesson is found in 

 the cultivation of alfalfa (better known to us as lucerne). 



In the United States alfalfa is an imported plant, and even ten 

 years ago the value of the hay it produced was put at twenty-five 

 million pounds. It is described in an official report as the great 

 forage-plant and soil-renovator of a vast area in the Rocky Mountains. 

 It is specially suited to arid regions subject to drought, and of 

 particular value as a rotation leguminous crop, and because its growth 

 greatly increases the productivity of sterile soil. Varieties have been 

 introduced into America from oases in the Sahara, types from 

 Turkestan resistant to drought, others from Siberia resistant to cold, 

 sand-lucerne from North Europe, and other varieties from Arabia, 

 Peru, and Chile. 



The Americans are extremely anxious to develop the possibilities 

 of the sterile areas in their country, and set great store by this plant 

 as a fertilizing agent. 



Such miracles in the matter of adaptation to soil and climate 

 have already been effected, and such unsuspected qualities have 

 been developed in plants, that it is impossible to say what latent 

 powers may still await revelation by calculated experiment. The 

 freakish powers of Nature are bestowed impartially upon the plant 

 and animal worlds, and it is not to be supposed that they were 

 exhausted when Nature first uplifted the palm beyond the reach 

 of browsing animals, and then drew up the long neck of the giraffe 

 in pursuit ; or when she invented the hump of the camel, the larder 

 of the so-called ship of the desert ; or designed the marvellously sure 

 foot and mathematical eye of the chamois. 



Another war, such as we have just experienced, would leave the 

 world perilously short of timber. In this direction a magnificent 



