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Mediterranean island of Cyprus[1] where its per capita export value in 1924 ($4.00) was greater than that of grain and grain products and forest products from the United States.

The carob is an evergreen tree with rich glossy evergreen foliage. It blooms in the autumn and, like the orange, carries the young fruit to the end of the next summer.

This tree is in itself an example of two parts of the tree crops thesis; namely, the tree is the best means of getting harvests from steep land and also from arid land.

THE CAROB'S PLACE IN MEDITERRANEAN AGRICULTURE

Everywhere the carob takes second-class land, either rocky or dry. On the plains of Valencia the irrigable land is in oranges and garden crops, but ten feet above the last irrigation ditch the carob and the olive begin making a crop on the rocky hillside of the semi-arid land. This is the case in Majorca, in Cyprus, in Algeria, and on Mt. Carmel, and most Mediterranean lands. Sometimes carob trees cling to hillsides which seem to be almost pure rock.[2] In Sicily it is an indipensable shade tree.

  1. "Wild carob trees abound all over the island." (Report of Director of Agriculture for Cyprus, p. 81. 1898)

    University of California Publication, "Feeding Dairy Calves in California." Bulletin No. 271. September, 1916, p. 32, by F. W. Woll and E. C. Voorhis, says:

    "According to Pott (Futtermittellehre, Vol. II, pp. 453-55), the crushed carob pods are frequently used in England for fattening sheep, and for ewes with lambs, also in connection with other concentrates for fattening steers. It is used in France as a feed for milk cows and young stock, and in southern Italy and other countries as a concentrate for horses and for growing pigs. British horses are at times fed as much as three kilos (6.6 pounds) per head of carobs daily, either cooked and mixed with cut straw or raw. Fattening steers are also fed preferably cooked carobs towards the end of the fallening period. For horses it is not even necessary to crush the pods. In southern Italy nobody would think of doing it although the strong pony-like horses do not receive any other concentrates and are fed only hay or green feed in addition."

  2. M. Trabut, the government botanist at Algiers, told me that he had seen carob tree roots at a depth of sixty feet on the hills of northern Algeria,