252 DRY-FARMING 
irrigation and produces regularly a small crop of most 
delicious fruit. Parsons describes his Colorado dry- 
farm orchard in which, under a rainfall of about 
fourteen inches, he grows, with great profit, cherries, 
plums, and apples. A number of prospering young 
orchards are growing without irrigation in the Great 
Plains area. Mason discovered a few years ago two 
olive orchards in Arizona and the Colorado ,desert 
which, planted about fourteen years previously, were 
thriving under an annual rainfall of eight and a 
half and four and a half inches, respectively. These 
olive orchards had been set out under canals which 
later failed. Such attested facts lead to the thought 
that trees may yet take their place as dry-farm crops. 
This hope is strengthened when it is recalled that the 
great nations of antiquity, living in countries of low 
rainfall, grew profitably and without irrigation many 
valuable trees, some of which are still cultivated in 
those countries. The olive industry, for example, is 
even now being successfully developed by modern 
methods in Asiatic and African sections, where the 
average annual rainfall is under ten inches. Since 
1881, under French management, the dry-farm olive 
trees around Tunis have increased from 45,000 to 
400,000 individuals. Mason and also Aaronsohn 
suggest as trees that do well in the arid parts of the 
old world the so-called ‘‘Chinese date” or Jujube 
tree, the sycamore fig, and the Carob tree, which 
yields the ‘‘St. John’s Bread” so dear to childhood. 
