230 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



so easy to transplant, so prolific, that it is probably the 

 easiest point of approach to the farmer who wishes to 

 experiment along these lines. 



The practice of the Corsican mountaineers in their 

 tree crop agriculture or fruitful forestry, whichever you 

 choose to call it. is very suggestive of a proper method of 

 handling the technical question of getting a stand of trees 

 and keeping it, and at the same time utilizing the by- 

 produce of pasture. The Corsican goat, whose milk makes 

 much good cheese, browses in the chestnut forests and 

 keeps down most of the undergrowth. When a Corsican 

 sees a chestnut tree which in five, ten, or twenty years is 

 likely to be ready to go to the pulp mill, he goes off to his 

 little nursery, digs out a ten-foot chestnut, and plants it 

 near the one which it is to succeed. He puts two stakes 

 beside it to keep it from being ridden down by the goats. 

 When it is established in two or three years, he grafts it, 

 and there it stands leading a submerged kind of life for 

 five or twenty or thirty years. But when the old monarch 

 by which it stands finally comes down, it is ready to spring 

 promptly into rapid growth and the fullest possible utili- 



PRODUCTION OF MULBERRY TREES 

 This grove on a Carolina farm is producing posts, firewood, and an estimated 

 crop of twenty-five dollars' worth of pork each year. The Everbearing variety 

 feeds the pigs for two months. 



zation of the vacated light, space and fertility. It is true 

 that the natural way to propagate a chestnut is to graft 

 the suckers that grow up around the stumps, but the Cor- 

 sican finds it is quicker to have the understudy tree estab- 

 lished in advance. This method also saves the necessity 

 of protecting the suckers from the merciless teeth of the 

 ingenious and industrious goat. 



Fruit and Light 



Perhaps some forester, if he has read this far, has 

 raised the objection that to produce timber, trees must be 

 tall, to be tall they must crowd, and crowding cuts off 

 light and limits fruit. I at once grant all this. To make 

 the tree yield the best amount of fruit, it must have light 

 on all the ends of its branches, a fact which the Corsican 

 knows well and practices carefully. 



But just here I wish to call attention to the fact that 

 the primacy of the saw log is passing; we are ever finding 

 more uses for our wood in the form of pulp, and I will be 

 glad to hear from any forester who can give me actual 

 figures on the relative yield of total wood per acre on a 

 crowded stand of tall timber and the open stand of well- 

 lighted trees capable of yielding fruit. This comparison, 

 if it is really to test out my point, should be made of fruit- 

 yielding trees growing in conjunction with some form of 



WILD OLIVE TREES IN ALGIERS 



The land not only furnishes sustenance to these revenue-producing trees but 



also excellent grazing for the numerous sheep seen browsing there. 



leguminous nurse plant, either leguminous bushes or 

 leguminous pasture plants. 



Legumes to Feed the Other Trees 



Here is a simple device which has been little used, but 

 which has great possibilities. It is well known that the 

 legume, gathering nitrogen in the tubercles on its roots, 

 can share it in that same season with a non-leguminous 

 plant growing alongside. This has been shown by experi- 

 ments that reveal much higher protein content in non- 

 leguminous plants growing in a mixed stand with legumes 

 than in the same species growing without legumes. There 

 are many legumes which, granted lime and phosphorous, 

 will riot in the half-shade and interspaces of trees that are 

 so spaced as to produce fruit. One at least of these leg- 

 umes, the ordinary yellow locust tree (Robinia pseud- 

 acacia), is one of the surest land improvers I know. In 

 1904 I planted an apple orchard in an abandoned field 

 that had in it some locust thickets. In four years' time 

 the trees that stood near the stumps of the leguminous 

 locusts were two or three times as big as the others, and 

 in thirteen years they have not lost their lead. Similarly I 

 find that the persimmon, that goat among trees, capable 

 of surviving on such starved land as the cotton farmer 

 abandons, also waxes near the locust tree. 



I submit that the locust is a very admirable nurse 

 plant for such non-leguminous fruit trees as the chestnut, 

 walnut, hickory, pecan, persimmon, mulberry. It need 

 not be allowed to grow up and shade them. The tree will 



