Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/433

Rh Mr. Aaron Aaronsohn, had already been engaged for many years in an agricultural and botanical exploration of the country, some of the results of which have been published in Bulletin 180, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Department of Agriculture. One of the most interesting discoveries was a wild species of wheat closely related to some of the domesticated forms, and possibly representing the long-sought ancestral form of this whole group of cereals. An opportunity of observing the habits of this plant in the region of Mt. Hermon in the summer of 1910 has left no doubt that the plant is a genuine wild species, and not an escaped form of domesticated wheat. A subsequent experiment with the wild wheat in southern California shows that it is worthy of further study from the standpoint of acclimatization in the United States.

But the wild wheat is only one of many subjects that are receiving attention at the newly established experiment station. Many difficulties are being encountered, as was fully expected beforehand, including the necessity of grappling with the problem of malaria. As this disease has been one of the most serious obstacles in the establishment of the colonies, the power to control it has a direct relation to the agricultural progress of the country. Some of the most fertile districts have remained almost uninhabited on account of the prevalence of malaria, a disease that modern sanitation can easily exterminate. The recent organization of a health bureau for the scientific study of the indigenous diseases and the improvement of hygienic conditions is the first outgrowth from the establishment of an agricultural experiment station.

Thus the founding of this station has given a new aspect to the whole colonization movement, in showing that the resources of modern science are to be enlisted. It is becoming apparent that some of the problems of Palestine will yield to scientific knowledge, although they may have resisted the most devoted efforts and the most liberal expenditure of money in unscientific ways. Motives of religion, charity and patriotism have figured so largely that constructive applications of science have received little consideration. If even a part of the colonists brought with them to Palestine a knowledge of modern scientific agriculture the situation would be entirely changed. Such knowledge would be far more precious than money, so much of which has been spent to little purpose.

The tendency has been to think of Palestine as a refuge from oppression rather than as an opportunity of developing a new agricultural civilization. But if the colonization movement continues it must be only a question of time when the traditional idealism of the people will assert itself in agricultural lines, as it has in so many other forms