DATES FROM "THE AMERICAN DESERT."
FIVE years ago the Department of Agriculture began the experiment of raising dates in the Southwest. The first crop has been gathered, and the confidence of the department's botanical experts is justified. It is now evident that the date can be naturalized into an American fruit as the Smyrna fig has been. The American people are hardly beginning to appreciate the wonderful work that the Agricultural Department is doing for them. There is scarcely an edible fruit or grain in the world which it is not adapting to American soil and climatic conditions. It has revolutionized rice-growing in the South, and the United States now exports rice, instead of importing three-quarters of the amount necessary for home consumption. It has introduced macaroni wheat, and 10,000,000 bushels were harvested last year. It has discovered new varieties of clover that promise to be invaluable to certain sections of the country. It has given Sumatra tobacco to Connecticut and Wisconsin tobacco-growers. It has stimulated the production of American silk. It is experimenting with new varieties of oranges that promise to resist the coldest winters of Florida and California. It is teaching American farmers the secret of scientific fertilization. It is showing them what soils will produce the most profitable crops. It is warring against every pest, from the boll weevil to the potato beetle. Nothing which concerns American agriculture or horticulture is foreign to its corps of trained scientists. Mr. Carnegie has just given $100,000 to Luther Burbank, a famous California producer of new fruits and flowers, to aid him in future work of this beneficent kind. The Agricultural Department has been doing a similar work for years, and is giving encouragement to thousands of persons engaged in a similar undertaking. It has become the great brain of American agriculture, and has well earned the tribute paid to it by Prof. Hugo Munsterberg, of Harvard, when he says that "there is no other government in the world which is engaged in such a many-sided scientific work." Of all the departments of the Federal Government, the Department of Agriculture is probably making the most valuable contributions to the welfare of the American people, and yet, in the popular mind, it has long been regarded chiefly as a medium for distributing dubious garden seeds to the constituents of Congressmen.—New York World.