SYMPOSIUM OX C0X5ERVATI0X 75 



York, Pennsylvania, ^laryland. \'irginia, Xorth and South Caro- 

 lina and Georgia, and one finds vast areas covered mainly with a 

 low gro^^"th of young trees and bushes, the main forests having 

 been removed. The same is true of many extended areas in the 

 central and western States. The utilization of these waste lands 

 forms one of our great national problems, and the beginning of 

 the solution of the problem rests in finding the crop best adapted 

 to such areas, or in all probabilit}- in breeding crops that will be 

 adapted to them. The necessity of using these waste lands in the 

 near future is evident. Shall we plant them to forest? Cer- 

 tainly much of this land should be in forest, or in tree crops of 

 some sort, but we want tree crops, at least in many cases, that 

 will return food as well as shelter. The Italian yield of chestnuts 

 is said to average twelve bushels per acre, and J. Russell Smith 

 states that ''the value of European mountain-side chestnut 

 orchards equals, acre for acre, the Illinois com belt." The 

 kinds of trees to plant in such areas for wood, for fruit, for 

 sugar, starch, camphor, or forage requires careful study and the 

 proper breeding to secure the best sorts possible. 



But this is not all of the problem. Grain, forage and special 

 fruit crops, not necessarily forest trees, require to be as care- 

 fully considered, and here again breeding to secure good species 

 adapted to the conditions will be the keynote of success. All 

 this requires time, and the generations to follow will not have 

 the time, and certainly not the money, if they do not repudiate 

 our war debts. The work should be started immediately in order 

 to obtain the results when conditions demand them. \\*hen I 

 urge this as one of the important national problems of con- 

 servation, I speak not without some authorit}-. My life has been 

 given to agricultural work in various parts of the United States. 

 My boyhood on an Iowa farm gave me a knowledge of the rich 

 prairie regions of the West. My education in the universities 

 of Nebraska and Missouri extended that knowledge. My sixteen 

 years of service in the National Department of Agriculture, work- 

 ing with cotton and oranges in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, ^lis- 

 sissippi and Texas, taught me southern conditions and demands, 

 and now my experience of the last five years in Cornell, asso- 

 ciated with that blaster Agriculturist, Dean L. H. Bailey, has 

 broadened my horizon to at least some conception of the field of 

 agricukural education. 



As to the possibilities of producing the suggested improve- 

 ments in plants, it again may be granted that I can speak with 



