or of a little town and he went back in
the barn where he had a bin full of dried chestnuts. He fed some of them
to my horse. It is their one crop. Many people have nothing but twenty
or thirty or forty acres of chestnuts and a little garden--a little
garden made by retaining walls making a terrace that must be tilled by
hand. That is the whole sustenance of the people. The value of the land
is usually estimated on a tree basis, and very seldom put on a land
basis. The value of land covered with trees is from two hundred to three
hundred dollars an acre, and land along side of this without trees may
be worth but ten dollars. The value of the chestnut trees for wood forms
a large part of the sale value. There is some good pasture under these
trees.

The renewing of these groves is perfectly systematic. The old trees,
having attained their full size, meet overhead and right alongside of
them are planted new trees, which under such circumstances make a very
poor growth. The young tree may get as high as this room in ten or
fifteen years, and the old tree being worth ten or fifteen dollars, is
then cut down (in that country if you want money cut down a chestnut
tree). The young tree takes the place very soon, and once established a
chestnut orchard lasts indefinitely. Sometimes they plant the young tree
beside the old one, ten or fifteen years before the old tree is to be
cut down.

The contrast between the populous villages of Corsica and like portions
of the Appalachian hillsides is striking. The inhabitants of the latter
cut down everything, plant corn and in two or three seasons the rain
simply carries the earth away and the farm has to be abandoned. In
contrast to that the orchards of Corsica have been there for many
centuries. I asked one man how long this thing had been going on. He
said "two hundred, three hundred, five hundred, one thousand years,
always." Nobody knows when they began to grow chestnuts. How the land
continues to grow them is more than I can understand. As an example of
permanent agriculture, that has everything I have ever heard of beaten
out. Those people had not fertilized the trees, as it would be a
physical impossibility to carry anything up those slopes; everything
comes down. They have been taking off wood and nuts always, nothing has
gone back. I have not been present at harvest time but I have consulted
with the representatives of the Department of Agriculture in France and
they tell me t