Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/191

 ice—the oaks and their under-thicket holding the earth for man as no other crop could have done and at the same time giving him a living. In this locality the formation was unconsolidated clay and gravels of such depth that bed rock was nowhere in sight. The slopes and height were such that the term mountain would be applied, perhaps even by the Swiss. On one of these slopes I examined an ilex orchard (or forest) that was giving a fair return as part of a farm. A part of this orchard was so steep as to be very difficult of ascent. When the tenant told me he let his hogs run there, I asked him how he kept them from falling out into the stream below.

"Oh," he said, "I don't let the big fat ones come here. I am afraid they would fall. I bring only the little ones into this part."

A mile away, on a less steep part of the same slope, for centuries men had been supporting themselves by the agriculture of the plow, and nature had shown her resentment of this act of violence. In some places from half to three-fourths of the original land surface was gone, through the work of gullies that had become from fifty to two hundred feet deep. "After man the desert" was here demonstrated. Of the two slopes the ilex slope was much the more productive. It had been saved from the plow only by being so steep that it could tempt no plowman.

Apparently there is no reason except inertia why we should not in time have an extensive cork industry in the United States. The tree is remarkable in its ability to survive both the drought of California and the humidity of the Cotton Belt. As a result of sporadic seed introduction, there are excellent cork trees scattered in many parts of California. There are good specimens in Byronville, Georgia; Atlanta,