Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/56

 the most vital of our resources (soil) faster and in greater quantity than has ever been done by any group of people at any time in the history of the world. If our people could be made to feel this, they would try to stop it.

As outlined above this work can employ heavy endowments. On the other hand experiments with trees can be on almost any scale. Two trees, for example, might produce great (hybrid) results. There are thousands of individuals who can experiment and have pleasure, recreation, and perhaps do something of great value to the human race.

Experimentation with nut trees is especially to be recommended for people in middle age and upward. One of the pains of advancing years is the declining circle of one's friends. One by one they leave the earth and the desolating loneliness of old age is felt by the survivors. But the man who loves trees finds that this group of friends (trees) stays with him, getting better, bigger, and more lovable as his years and their years increase. This perhaps explains the delightful enthusiasm of some of the septuagenarian and octogenarian tree lovers whom I know and have known, such as the late E. A. Richl and Benjamin Buckman, both of Illinois, who were plunging ahead in their eighties as though they were in their forties.

Mr. Riehl began nut tree pioneering on some Mississippi bluffs near Alton at the age of sixty-three and actually made money out of nuts. He was really just getting started when he died at the age of eighty-seven. I knew him for eleven years. It was a great pleasure to associate with such a youthful and enthusiastic spirit. He was the youngest old man I ever knew,