trees-testing them by ten thousands to find the good trees.
- 4. Operating experimental farms to try out the new trees as crops.
- 5. Carrying on publicity work to get the new idea into the conservative mind.
- 6. Making studies in soil erosion and its prevention.
1. Finding Parent Trees
The one original parent Baldwin apple was born by chance in a fence corner. It was propagated by grafting until there were millions of Baldwin apple trees. If this same process were applied to the best wild crop trees now growing in the world, I am sure that the hill fields from Massachusetts to Texas could become more valuable than the best nearby farm land, and be covered with orchards of bearing trees like the best wild
- (a) Shagbark hickory trees and their natural hybrids,
- (b) Shellbark hickory trees and their natural hybrids,
- (c) Pecan hickory trees and their natural hybrids,
- (d) Butternut trees,
- (c) Black walnut trees,
- (f) Chinese walnut trees and natural hybrids,
- (g) Chestnut trees and already created hybrids.
These crops would be for humans. For animals the much wider expanses of hill land should be covered with
- (a) Acorn-yielding oaks,
- (b) Honey locust trees,
- (c) Chestnut trees,
- (d) Persimmon trees,
- (c) Mulberry trees, and many others.[1]
It is easy to speak of an orchard of best shagbarks or acorn-
- ↑ Professor C. C. Colby, of the University of Chicago, says the Highland Rim County of East Tennessee is "alive with food in the fall-butternuts, walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, persimmons, and papaws, all in great abundance and lying on the ground."
