103 



l)arium of the Royal Society. Dr. Stapf has been traveling in Canada, 

 attending the meetings of the Royal Society there. 



The President: We shall very much appreciate the oppor- 

 tunity of meeting him. 



^Ve will now adjourn to the lecture hall, to hear Dr. J. Russell 

 Smith. 



NL'T TREE CROPS AS A PART OF PERMANENT 

 AGRICULTURE WITHOUT PLOWING 



Dr. J. Russell Smith, Professor of Economic Geography, Columbia 



University, New York 



My first experience with nut culture was gained on the farm of a 

 man I knew more than 30 years ago. It was a truck farm not far 

 from Pliilrdelphia near n boarding school which I infested and the 

 farmer complained that I infested the farm. The farm had its_ fence 

 rows and driveways lined with grafted chestnut trees bearing abund- 

 antly of large fine nuts of European origin. It was remarkable 

 liow (juickly tliey filled my ])ockets. I usually succeeded in gathering 

 them on the hundred per cent basis. 



I p.m interested in this subject today because of an innate love of 

 trees and because the development of a tree crop agriculture offers a 

 way to stop soil erosion. To me the worst of all economic sins is the 

 destruction of resources, and the worst of all resource destructions is 

 the destruction of the soil, our one great and ultimate resource. "After 

 man the desert" has been truly said too often of many old lands. 



Soil cover is after all about the only thing that man has as a basis 

 for tlie supjinrt of his life on earth. All of our food depends directly 

 or indirectly upon plants. 



In hilly countries there is usually but a thin layer of earth and 

 rotton rock between the surface of the field and the bed rock. It is 

 a very difficult problem to maintain this cover of earth and it is very 

 easy to lose it. Sometimes it is lost through over-pasturing and' de- 

 struction of turf, but more largely through plowing. 



The nut tree is particularly eflTective as a part of a plowless agri- 



