DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



247 



in the fastness of the Scottish highlands and while England was being 

 invaded by the Roman legions, the cultivators of these olive orchards in 

 Tunis were practicing a refinement of dry land soil culture which has 

 scarcely been excelled with all of our agricultural developments. They 

 probably did not possess the steel discs nor the subsurface packers, but 

 they understood a method which accomplished the same purpose and 

 their camel-drawn plow kept the soil between these scattering olive trees 

 in perfect tilth, economizing every drop of rainfall; first, by preventing 

 its running off from the soil, and, second, by the dust mulch. 



The Chemlali Olive. 



Of several varieties grown the most important is known as the 

 Chemlali, having rigid branches producing many small twigs, and a pe- 

 culiarly stiff and resistant leaf system. The fruit is small, oval and very 

 rich in oil, for the production of which it is alone adapted. This is doubt- 

 less a seedling of desert origin which through centuries of culture has 

 evinced its superiority under these trying situations. 



■ Olive Orchards in the United States. 



Have we anything in olive culture analogous to this in the United 

 States? A few months ago as far as knowledge possessed in the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture is concerned, we should have been obliged to answer 

 no, but just about a year ago while visiting the Indian Agency, at Saca- 

 ton, Arizona, I learned of an olive plantation which had been made near 

 Casa Grande station on a once prosperous branch of the Florence Canal. 

 Visiting the place, I found that 14 years ago an area of about 20 acres had 

 been planted to various fruits, including grape vines, peaches, apricots, figs, 

 and about five acres of olives. For seven years past the failure of the 

 Florence Canal had cut off the supply of water. The average rainfall of 

 the region amounts to about 8 1-2 inches, practically the same as that of 

 the olive district in Tunis. Instead of growing particular varieties of 

 olives adapted to the dry land conditions this ground had been set to 

 the ordinary types of olives grown in the French and Italian districts. 

 They had been set 24 feet apart each way in a granitic sandy soil having 

 a considerable basis of red clay. When visited it was evident that the 

 trees had been badly overrun by stock, and -strange as it may seem to 

 an eastern man, the stock had browsed upon this olive grove very greedily, 

 but wherever the branching of the trees had formed a sufficient hedge 

 around the outside of the stool to allow the central shoots to grow un- 

 touched, they had reached a height in many cases of 12 to 15 feet, and in 

 some few of 18 to 20 feet. The foliage was green and luxuriant, making 

 the grove visible across the desert a mile away. An examination of the 

 root system showed that these trees were true dry land trees, possessing 

 no tap root, nor system of roots penetrating to a great depth, but gather- 

 ing their sole supply of moisture from the soil at a depth of from two or 

 three to twelve inches. At a distance of 12 feet from the trees on the 

 24-foot squares, and even to the halfway distance on the diagonal, the 



