105 



on the edge of a liilly, limestone plateau, where the rainfall is less 

 than 10 inclies and in some years as low as five. 



All important part of the food supply of these people is fur- 

 nished by date and olive trees whicli they grow in the gulches of their 

 limestone i^lateau. They built a dry rock dam behind which earth- 

 wash lodges. In this the trees are planted and every rain sends 

 more earth and soaks that which has collected. The plan can certainly 

 not be called an experiment for the people have lived there for cen- 

 turies. They have olive trees that are several centuries old and I 

 have never seen such fine olive trees, not in California, or the plains of 

 *!>pain. Portugal. France, Itah', or in Algeria or Tunis, and I have 

 seen a good many olive trees in those countries. The olive tree is 

 usually open, light and feathery. These in tlie Matniatas gulches are 

 thick and' black and rank. 



For automatic cultivation and fertilization the plan of these primi- 

 tive agriculturists is hard to beat. You put up j'^our stone dam, and 

 every time the gulley runs with water your crop is irrigated and 

 fertilized. Can you beat it? 



Three Americans of my acquaintance have independently experi- 

 mented and discovered along similar lines. 



The late Freeman Thorpe of Hubert, ^linnesota, did it with much 

 enthusiasm. So did the late Dr. Meyer, a friend of J. F. Jones, near 

 Lancaster. He discovered it accidentally. He put a brush dam 

 across a gully. Water stood behind it for days after every rain. The 

 api^le tree near it grew much more than the others. That started the 

 Doctor. He began to dig small field reservoirs and collect water 

 near trees and he found that it paid even with the very expensive pro- 

 cess of lioe and shovel. 



Tlie idea has been modernized and brought to the machine stage 

 which characterizes our present-day agriculture, by Mr. Lawrence 

 Lee, a civil engineer-farmer of Leesburg, Va. Mr. Lee runs a 

 level line across the face of the clay hills, and then with a Martin' 

 ditcher scoops out a terrace on this horizontal line. It makes the 

 terrace so that the water will hold and will not ruri away. Mt. Lee is 

 sure that nine-tenths of the heavy thunder shower runs off of the hills, 

 in normal conditions of non-plowing, and that if he plows, most of 

 the water and much of the soil go off together. He is also sure 

 that the water pockets hold both water and soil. 



Rows of apple trees planted below these waterholding terraces 

 thrive without cultivation as well as do other trees across the row 



