TUNG-OLD OIL FOR NEW NEEDS 



better methods of oil recovery. When he was active in 

 business Bennett baked a dog biscuit shaped like a 

 bone. It did not fool Fido. It did beguile dog owners 

 into buying this novel-shaped biscuit, sized shrewdly 

 to suit all breeds from Pomeranian to Great Dane. As a 

 tung grower, when Mother Nature balked, Bennett 

 studied her whims and actually persuaded her to co- 

 operate in encouraging a Chinese tree to settle down 

 happily in Florida. 



Bennett planted his thousandth acre in 1930: the first 

 thousand of any single owner. He coaxed the Florida 

 Experiment Station authorities into making the first 

 scientific studies of tung culture on thirty plots of two 

 acres each which he donated to the cause. Early and 

 late he has proselyted for tung and three of the biggest, 

 most successful growers are his converts. Scores of little 

 landowners owe their tung groves to his initial preach- 

 ing and his continuing, friendly, expert advice. Other 

 pioneers have fought to establish the tung industry in 

 Louisiana and Mississippi and Georgia, but none has 

 a longer and more distinguished record than this 

 adopted son of Florida. 



Westward near Picayune, Louisiana, two big lumber- 

 men, Lamont Rowlands and L. O. Crosby, had caught 

 the tung fever, sensing an opportunity to reclaim their 

 cutover timberlands. Rowlands, a tall, good-looking, 

 quiet-spoken Michigander, cherishes a deep sense of 

 past obligation to the denuded acres that fed his saw- 



101 



