860 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1015 



The European utilization of tlie acorn a3 

 swine food amounts to millions of dollars 

 annually, and while we have some hundreds of 

 thousands of hogs using the bought privilege 

 of eating the acorns of our national forests, 

 no one seems to have seriously considered the 

 possibility of investigating the American oak 

 as a corn substitute, yet there is good reason 

 to believe it may be more effective than com 

 in many localities. American trees yielding 

 several hundred pounds of acorns are common. 

 The utilization of the fig in Majorca and 

 Portugal gives us added reason to contemplate 

 the great possible service of mulberries and 

 persimmons as automatic pig feeders, the crop 

 being harvested by the animals themselves. 

 The extensive use of the chestnut as a corn 

 forage substitute in the mountainous parts of 

 Italy, Corsica and France shows us what we 

 might do in Appalachia with native or im- 

 ported chestnuts, and also with hickories and 

 other native nut trees. 



2. Major Foods from Tree Crops. — The great 

 dietary wants of man are proteid for tissue, 

 carbohydrate and fat for energy. None of 

 these wants has been met to any important 

 extent by a tree crop in the United States. 

 The proteid demand is substantially met in 

 Europe by the use of the walnut, almond and 

 filbert. Unquestionably the native and Per- 

 sian walnuts of the United States, along with 

 that remarkable tree, the pecan, and the nu- 

 merous na.tive hickories and hazelnuts, ofEer 

 us great possibilities of new and extended in- 

 dustries and new staple food supplies. 



The carbohydrate tree crops of the Old 

 World are even more important than the pro- 

 teids. The date (more nutritious than bread) 

 is the main stay of vast areas, and the fig 

 (even more nutritious than the date) is also 

 a great food. The chestnut is, to large areas 

 of Spain, France, the Mediterranean islands, 

 and Italy, the same thing that corn is to the 

 Appalachian mountaineers — a great starch 

 food. The acorn, with an analysis much like 

 that of wheat, excepting a shortage of protein, 

 has for ages been a food for many Mediter- 

 ranean peoples, and holds out at any time the 

 possibility of being made into a very accepta- 



ble farinaceous food for the American people 

 if they should choose to develop it, in an age 

 of science and factory-prepared foods. Fat 

 is furnished in Europe by the olive to so great 

 an extent that the olive covers a larger pro- 

 portion of Spain than wheat does in the 

 United States. We have not yet developed an 

 oil industry, although the resources are at 

 hand. 



3. Areas and Adjustment. — The tree is plainly 

 our best means of utilizing steep and rough 

 land, and if we can develop means of utilizing 

 the cropping tree without the plow, we can 

 easily double the crop area of the United 

 States. At the present time tree crops cover 

 only about one fiftieth of our agricultural area, 

 when they apparently possess the possibility 

 of covering half of it with great profit and 

 with a permanence of production now un- 

 known. 



The example of a thousand per cent, in- 

 crease in value of a Corsican hillside when 

 well established in chestnut orchards that 

 have never been plowed and which have pro- 

 duced for centuries, is exceedingly suggestive. 

 The problem is not merely a problem in 

 forestry, for it is an established fact, that the 

 fruiting trees must have sunshine on all sides. 

 Numerous modifications of the forestry situa- 

 tion, however, suggest themselves. Tall trees 

 like the pecan might be surrounded by coppices 

 of leguminous trees like the locust, which 

 might attain salable size, and by their nitrog- 

 enous roots greatly enrich the soil, as is the 

 case where certain leguminous trees are 

 grovrai with coilee. Crop trees like the pecan 

 and walnut, persimmon or mulberry might be 

 surrounded by thickets of bush size legumes, 

 which absolutely maintain the soil against ero- 

 sion, which enrich it, and which might be 

 annually cut in the place of being annually 

 plowed, or they might be pastured once a year 

 with goats, and thus kept under control, made 

 to render their service to the crop tree, and 

 still give some value as forage. 



4. Moisture and Fertility Control. — Ameri- 

 can agriculture is unquestionably suffering 

 from too great a conviction that cultivation. 



