R 



Feeding the Land 177 



of plant. Contrast the wild grape, or cherry, 

 with the cultivated; the fox-grape with the Dela- 

 ware; the black cherry of the woods with the 

 Montmorenci or Morello or Tartarian of the 

 orchard. We seek quantity and quality; Nature 

 is satisfied with a fruit that will reproduce itself, 

 irrespective of quality or quantity. She has 

 done her perfect work when she has matured 

 a seed that will grow and that actually does 

 grow. 



In brief, we use the land by converting it into 

 soil that will produce plant or fruit (stem, leaf, 

 root, berry, nut, seed, tuber, or pulp) finer in 

 quality, larger, more abundant in quantity than 

 will the wild soil. This means that fruit-growing 

 is an artificial procedure. On one acre of culti- 

 vated soil we produce many times as much as will 

 grow, in a state of nature, on wild soil. Therefore 

 the supreme problem with us is how to make soil. 

 We cannot change climate, but we can change, we 

 can make, soil. Climate, soil, and the man make 

 the fruit-farm. Given a climate which permits 

 a plant to grow, man by manipulating the soil may 

 bring the plant to what he calls a *' state of perfec- 

 tion'* — that is, to a quality and a quantity desired 

 by him as food. In this process he may greatly 

 modify, and usually does modify, the original plant, 

 even to sterility of fruit-seed, and to gross abnormal- 

 ity of plant stock. The supreme purpose is the 

 production of food; or, viewed as truly from 

 another angle, the supreme labor is the assem- 



