high?

Mr. Hutt: It depends a great deal on the nature of the soil, the
water-pulling capacity of the soil. Take a soil like that I mentioned,
in Hyde County, near the ocean; you can see it quake all around you.

Mr. Lake: But would you say that the northern nut grower might safely
put his orchard on soil that had a water-table within two or three feet
of the surface?

Mr. Hutt: I could tell if I saw that soil. If it is craw-fishy, or soil
that is ill-drained or won't carry ordinary crops, I'd say keep off of
it, but if it will bear ordinary crops it's all right; in some cases
where the soil is very rich the plant does not need to go down into that
soil anything like the depth it would in a poor soil. The poorer the
soil the further the roots have to go to find nourishment.

Mr. Lake: I think that is an extremely exceptional case in relation to
northern nuts. There is very little such North Carolina land in this
section of the country, if I judge right. We don't plant nut-growing
orchards up here in peaty soils, so Dr. Deming's recommendation was
rather for very good agricultural soil. A water-table here must be eight
or ten feet deep; in that event, it would not make any difference
whether you left three feet of tap-root or 15 inches.

Mr. Hutt: No.

The Chairman: In the soils of some parts of New England, a tree would
have to have a root three or four hundred feet deep to get to flowing
water, but nevertheless trees flourish there.

Mr. Lake: But the capillarity of the soil provides water for the tree
above the water-table.

Mr. Corsan: It all depends on the kind of nut. At St. Geneva I came
across a butternut that was growing in a soil that would kill a chestnut
very quickly. The soil was very springy and wet and the butternut just
loves that soil. I found that while other butternut trees bore nuts in
clusters of one to three, this butternut tree was bearing them in
clusters of ten and eleven. At Lake George, right in front of the
Post-Office, there was one tree twenty-four years old, two feet through,
that grew butternuts in clusters of ten and you could get a barrel of
nuts from it. It bore again this last summer heavily, not in clusters of
ten but in clusters of seven or eight. When we have damp soil we can't
grow the chestnut but the hickory nut will grow in a swamp, and so will
the butternut.

The Chairman: And the beech.

Mr. Corsan: The beech wants clay; it won't grow unless there is clay.

The C