Carrying American reclamation experience to the Mediterranean soils of Palestine, now being contemplated by the Zionist Organization of America, will constitute the first great scientific transformaion of a land which has remained almost as it existed 2,000 years ago, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Department of the Interior, Dr. Elwood Mead, stated in an interview with your correspondent prior to his departure for Palestine on July 31st.
Dr. Mead will act as an advisor to the Zionist Organization. He has been granted two months’ leave of absence by the Department of the Interior, he stated. He said that he planned to stop in England and possibly in Italy for study of land settlement in those countries, and that upon his return to the United States he would report upon this phase to the Secreary of the Interior.
In 1924 Dr. Mead visited Palestine for the purpose of surveying the possibilities of reclaiming its land. Since that time, he said, scientists and economists from both the United States and the British Empire have been investigating the advisability of reclamation there, and their data will be available for him upon his arrival. Among those now in the field, according to Dr. Mead, are Prof. Frank Adams of the University of California; Nowles Ryerson, a specialist in semi-tropical and tropical fruits of California, and A. T. Strahorn, a soil technologist of the United States Department of Agriculture.
Scientists from California predominate among those now studying the Palestine situation, according to Dr. Mead, for California is similar climatically to Palestine, and the red soil bordering the Mediterranean is the same kind of red soil in which orang ##
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
