Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/53

 other half dozen on the hickories. The magnitude of such an undertaking may be grasped when we realize that one species of apple has given rise in America to over seven thousand named varieties, and new ones and better ones are being made every year.

The hybridization work of an institute of mountain agriculture should amount to hundreds and thousands of cross pollinations every year. Each hybrid seed would have to be planted and grown to fruiting age.

The best hybrids should be tested to determine their possibilities as crop producers. This would cover many acres of ground and need a considerable staff of men.

It is one thing to tell the farmer that here are good black walnuts or chestnuts or acorn-yielding oaks or honey locust trees, and it is quite another matter to organize these into an effective farm. That is a matter of agricultural economics and farm management; so the institute should have a number of farms in which tree crops were worked out into a system to make a well-balanced and profitable use of land, well-balanced use of a man's time, and good safe living for the family who depended upon it.

An institute of mountain agriculture, as outlined above, needs an expert in publicity on its staff. In the beginning years he could be chiefly employed in the very difficult task of getting the attention of almost every land owner in the United States, of every tree lover, and of every hunter, so that we might find those rare parent trees that are standing in fence corners, back fields, distant pastures, and remote mountain-sides.