Frank N. Meyer: Plant Hunter in Asia, Isabel Shipley Cunningham SIGNED

For ten years Frank Nicholas Meyer traveled across the continent of Asia for the United States Department of Agriculture looking for useful plants and fulfilling his promise to 'skim the earth in search of things good for man.' Along the way through China, Siberia, Russia, and what was then Manchuria, Turkestan, and Mongolia he dealt with threatening robber brigands, wolf packs, revolutionary soldiers on the prowl, interpreters who refused to go on, carts that shattered on lonely mountainsides, inadequate food, poor shelter, and the vermin that infested Asian villages. Meyer concentrated on fruits, nuts, grains , and fodder crops. Entering China in 1905 near the dawn of the era when explorers could travel freely there, he searched primarily for economically useful plants rather than ornamentals - the first plant hunter to do so There is a cup stain on the back of book