Grass from Gobi

Last week Secretary of Agriculture Wallace pushed his land reclamation program ahead another notch by organizing a party to search for a grass hardy enough to grow in the drought-made deserts of the Midwest. To head the party he chose a Russian-born mystic who has spent most of his 59 years painting 3,000 pictures and preaching to three continents the gospel of Unifying Humanity Through Art. He was grave, goat-bearded Nicholas Konstantin Roerich, honorary president of Manhattan's Roerich Museum. What made him valuable to Secretary Wallace was that from 1924 to 1929 he painted his way through Central Asia, is an authority on its lands and flora.

Mystic Roerich's job will be to guide two experts from the U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry through Central Asia to the rim of the Gobi Desert. There grow plants hardy enough to survive a summer heat of 100DEG, a winter cold of -40DEG, an annual rainfall of less than 16". From these he will help choose grasses and shrubs which can grow in the baking, shifting midlands of the U. S.

Meanwhile, the project of planting a $75,000,000 belt of trees as a means of land reclamation was last week running into considerable ridicule. Near broiling Manhattan, Kans. a farmer drawled to an out-of-town newshawk: "Have you ever been to those small western Kansas county seat towns? If you have you may have noticed the trees about the public buildings. They have been trying for 20 years to raise trees in prepared soil and right now they have not got them much more than ten feet high."

In Washington Oklahoma's Senator Gore chimed in: "Out in Arizona they have a petrified forest. It might be a good idea to graft some of them onto the saplings."

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