The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1909-09-15

It, as a business firm would be in con-
tinuing the pay Of a salesman on the
road?
If it Is worth while to transform
the desert landscapes of the South
west and dot them with young date
palm plantations, il it IS worth while
to increase the value Of the wheat
crop by three millions Of dollars
through the introduction of a wheat
which will grow farther west on the
dry belt of the Great Plains than any
American wheat could grow, if it is
worth While to find a harder alfalfa
which will not winter-kill in the
Northwest, and another which grows
all winter long in the mild weather
of the Southeast and yields the farmer
twenty per cent more hay, it is worth
while to keep up and extend the eX-
plorations for new plants.
Thousands of plants fail where n
succeeds, but that n success car
ries with it such earning power that
it makes the investment pay.
Frank Meyer. the latest explorer
of the Office of Plant Introduction,
has been gone more than three years.
He has entered Manchuria when it
required cable dispatches between
Pekin and Toxic to get permission
for him to go. He has entered the
eastern edge of Mongolia, and
searched through the great fruit
growing province of S%hantung. He
has travelled through the mountainous
wilds of northern Korea. and ex-
| plored the regions south of Shanghai.
He has gone up the lower Yangtze,
and by rail to Pekin. He has spent
a spring in the denuded hills of the
Wu-tai Shan, and he has pushed his
explorations as far north as Vladi-
yoStok.
In the Odd Corners of the Earth.
On all these trips he has looked
always for new plants. Sometimes
he has found them in the back yard
of a missionary bungalow; sometimes
they were on some bleak mountain
side where wolves and tigers are so
frequent that the Chinese guides de-
| serted him. Sometimes he has bought
seeds of a rice-planter in his field of
dry-land rice, or cucumber seeds of
a Chinese hothouse-owner, or dug up
a few plants from the sedge lawn in
front of a foreign legation in Pekin.
He has picked cones from sacred trees
on the tomb of Confucius, and har-
vested the seed-crop from alfalfa
plants which he found growing on
the city wall of Lao Yang.
He has travelled through miles OF
orchards during the fruiting season.
and returned in the autumn to get
bud-sticks from the same trees which
he had noted when in full fruit in the
summer. He has eaten delicious mel
ons and saved the seed in paper
packets. He has spent hours trying
to convince the owners Of a thin
| shelled walnut that to sell a few
scions from it would not bewitch its
life away.
Before two years had passed since
Mr.. Meyers stream Of Chinese immi-
grants-who do not come under the
exclusion act-began to arrive, the
office was receiving photographs of
nursery rows planted with rapidly
| growing plants of Chinese walnuts,
Chinese c%hestnuts, seedless hardy
Chinese persimmons, hardy wild april
cots. broad-leaved Monaghan oaks,
wh~ite-barked pines, early-fruiting
cherries, new forms of willows, Chi
nese dates like our jujubes, only far
finer, Chinese p~istachios, Chinese
grapes, Chinese peaches and plums,
pears and ounces. and a host Of other
new possibilities for the nurserymen.
1t is yet too soon to say what this
exploration will be worth to the coun
try, but judging from former intro.
auctions, it will pay many hundreds
of times into the pockets Of the farm
ers and fruit-growers the thirteen
thousand five hundred dollars which
it has cost to keep Mr.. Meyer for
three years at a low salary in these
inhospitable regions Of the world. AS
for the explorer, besides the memory
of years of adventure, he will have
the satisfaction of seeing, perhaps, a
handful Of seed increased until it COW
ers great areas of land, or a single
bud-stick multiplied into orchards of
bearing trees.-Youth's Companion.