Careful experiment in central Portugal has shown that 5.3 liters[1] of acorns will make one pound of pork. Thirty-five and one-fourth liters make a bushel. Therefore, a bushel makes 6.6 pounds of pork.
As the acorn crop is not under much control of man, does not come regularly, and above all is not harvested and measured, it is difficult to make an exact approximation of pigs and acorns. This difficulty is met by the organization of fortnightly markets in the villages of the cork regions where pigs in any and all stages of fatness and leanness are bought and sold at any and all times. Two weeks before the pig is completely fatted, he may be sold by the man who has a shortage of acorns to the man who has a surplus. In estimating the number of pigs that he should buy, the Iberian oak tree farmer walks through his forest scanning the trees and noting the number of acorns lying on the ground. Every time he sees the fattening for one more pig, he puts another acorn into his pocket.
On the unfenced acres of a cork estate two kinds of herders are daily abroad; the swineherd, whose wards eat grass and acorns, and the shepherd, whose sheep and goats browse the bushes and grass and furnish wool and milk—the fifth and sixth products of the cork forest.
As I rode through one of these estates on an April day, I came upon a long lane full of sheep, seven hundred of them, crowded solidly between close fences. Two shepherds were busy at their regular afternoon job of milking the sheep. They started at one end of the long and motley mass and worked their way through it. One presided over the milk bucket, the other caught a ewe, backed her up to the bucket, and held her while the milker extracted a few spoonfuls of
- ↑ These figures were given me by Mr. John L. Wilson, mentioned above. An American finding is as follows: Mr. G. T. McNess, Superintendent, Nacodoches, Texas, Sub-experiment station said (letter, Feb. 11, 1914) to W. J. Spillman, of U. S. Department of Agriculture, "One gallon of acorns is equal to ten good ears of corn."
