AGRICULTURAL EXPLORATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9656, 22 November 1909, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL EXPLORATION.

The Department ot Agriculture in the United States carries on a pro • gre&sive policy in laying the whole world under contribution for seeds or slips of plants that it chinks can be beneficially introduced into the soil of the States. It is said that every day the Department receives a consignment of eight or ten shipments of living seeds or phnts from the moat out-of-the-way parts of the world. Of course, this all means money, but the Department believes the money to be well spent. An officer of the Department says:— "If it is worth while to transiorm the desert landscapes of the South-west, and dot them with young date palm plantations; if it is worth while to increase the value ©f the wheat crop by £600,000 through the introduction of a wheat which will grow farther west on the Iry belt of the great plains than any American wheat could grow —it is worth while to keep up and extend exploration for new plants." One of the Department's trained explorers, who may be taken as an example, has been nearly three years journeying through the highways and byways of the Far East Everywhere he has been on the lookout for new plants. Sometimes he has found them in the yard of a missionary bungalow. He has picked from sacred trees on the tomb of Confucius, travelled through miles of orchards during the fruiting season, and returned in autumn to get bud sticks from trees he noted in full fruit. Among his acquisitions that have already been successfully reproduced in the States, are rapidly growing Chinese walnuts, Chinese etiestnuts, seedless hardy Chintse persimmons, hardy wild apricots, early-fruiting cherries, new forms of willows, Chinese dates and grapes, and a host of other possibilities for the nurseryman. It has cost £2,700 to keep this explorer at a low salary for three years in these lands, but the chief of the Agricultural Department estimates that this work will put many thousand times that sum into the pockets of American farmers and fruitgrowers.