Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/192

 Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; in Florida; and in Louisiana.

The excellence of the cork produced on the humid Mediterranean shores near the base of the Pyrenees in Spain gives further evidence of the apparent and rather surprising ability of these trees to thrive in the heat and humidity of the American Cotton Belt, as well as in the dry summer climate of California.

In America our frontier farmer ancestors fed themselves in part for generations on mast- (chiefly acorn-) fattened pork, and the raccoon, opossum, and bear also subsisted mainly on the acorn in the season of autumn fattening. Well fattened on acorns the bear had nothing to do, so he hibernated till spring, thereby lengthening the season of acorn service. Yet no agriculturalist seems to have applied constructive imagination to the very suggestive facts which have been thrusting themselves upon our attention over hundreds of thousands of square miles for several generations. Some agriculturists, however, are beginning to appreciate the possibilities of this neglected field. For example, Professor H. Ness, Chief Horticulturist, Texas Experiment Station, College Station, Texas, has begun to experiment with hybridizing the oak, and he thinks that experiments with feeding mast might "give results which would be of the greatest value to the farmers throughout our southern region." In the explanation of this belief he says: