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 ]Drospering 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, i)lanted 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 secti(.)ns, 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 inthviduals. 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. 



