36 



grew in the vicinity. There were few chestnuts in that vicinity and 

 the fruit from this narrow leaved oak took the place of chestnuts for 

 pigs, fowls and boys. 



I began to look into the question more deeply. Some of us are al- 

 ready familiar with the fattening of cattle, hogs and fowls on acorn 

 mast. Some of us older members remember perhaps to have seen a hun- 

 dred, thousand wild pigeons sweep into an oak hillside, these to be fol- 

 lowed by another hundred thousand) and another. We liardly realized 

 the enormous number of tons of acorns that were being picked up by 

 the wild pigeons. Oak trees are adapted to a very wide variety of soils, 

 in fact, I do not know that we have any soils that bear trees of any 

 kind which will not grow some of tlie more tlian fifty species of oak 

 trees and shrubs wliich are indigenous to this country. Many kinds 

 can be raised upon the prairies where there are now no trees. The 

 prairies were treeless in the past because of fires rather than because the 

 soil was not adapted to hardwood growtli. 



We know that even from seedling oak trees the crop of acorns 

 exceeds in food value the crop of corn which may be raised by tillage 

 upon good land. When we come to making selection, hybridization 

 and grafting, the history witli tlie oak trees will presumably be almost 

 precisely that which has applied to other fruit and nut trees. Further- 

 more, some of the trees will produce heavy crops of mast upon rocky 

 and upon soil that is too poor to grow crops of annual plants with 

 tillage. 



Cattle, horses and fowls will eat acorns that are distasteful to man 

 because of tannin, berberine and other extractives, but there arc a num- 

 ber of species of oaks bearing so-called sweet acorns which are all ready 

 for roasting and boiling or for being made into flour for man's uses. 

 Many of the species of oaks which bear bitter acorns are already used 

 bv man after artificial preparation which removes the elements interfer- 

 ing with the good taste and acorns of this sort as well as sweet acorns 

 are made into cakes and porridge. 



A well flavored oil is extracted from several species of acorns and 

 in others the acorn cups alone produce such a high percentage of 

 tannin and of coloring matter that the cups pay for the cost of gather- 

 ing the harvest of nuts which have their own special value. 



