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 Grafting trees is no new art. The Romans did it by a number of methods, nineteen methods according to one writer. And that the art of grafting was well established in the Old World two thousand years ago is certified by the Apostle Paul's writings to the Romans from Corinth, prior to his visit to Italy. In the 11th chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he uses as a simile the art of tree grafting, likening to it the progress of the Jews and the Gentiles. (Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 11, verses 16-24.)

This Corsican chestnut farming is typical of that which covers many thousands of steep and rocky acres in central France, some of the slopes of the Alps, of the mountains of Spain, of Italy from end to end, and of parts of the Balkans. Especially do I recall when crossing the Apennines from Bologna to Florence, the marked and sudden increase of population that occurred at about two thousand feet elevation. The slopes below two thousand feet were treeless and on them were few evidences of people. At two thousand feet, where the chestnut forests begin, the villages were numerous, large, and substantial.

Compare this age-old and permanent European mountain farming with the perishing corn farms of our own Appalachian mountains. The farmer of Carolina, Tennessee, or Kentucky mountains has the cornfield as his main standby. He has a garden, perhaps in the woods some pigs—largely acorn-fed, some cows and sheep which range the glades and hills and pick such living as they can. The corn crop is the main standby. Corn bread is the chief food of the family. If there be enough, the pig or sheep or cow may get a little, or again they may not. The part that corn whiskey has played in the history of this region need not be expanded here.

The economic contrast between the Corsican and Appalachian mountaineers is striking. In Corsica the stone house in contrast to the log cabin of Appalachia; in Corsica the good stone road going on a horizontal plane along the mountainside in contrast to the miserable trails running up and down the American mountain; the Corsican mountain covered with majestic trees whose roots hold the soil in place, in contrast to the Amer-