his land produces a ton to three thousand pounds to the
acre, with the big years doubling that and the little years halving it.
This without taking anything away from the land apparently. The land is
as good as when they began, and is supporting a dense population and has
for centuries.

Another forage nut which struck me as even more important than the
chestnut, because of its much wider possibility in America, is the
acorn. I have been through considerable areas in Portugal where they
didn't care whether they had a cork tree or an oak. Land with such trees
is worth from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars per acre.
They assured me that the acorn oak forest was as valuable as the cork
forest. Some of this land is wheat land. They will let an oak tree stand
right in the middle of a field where the cultivation of the ground
improves the tree. After the wheat harvest the hogs fatten on the
acorns.

The evergreen oak of southern Europe is highly prized for its acorns. I
have seen large areas of bearing trees. I have been told time and again
that they bear at a comparatively early age. The oak is capable of
grafting, about as easily as the chestnut. I have seen them grafted, all
the way from those of this spring up to three hundred years old. The
number of trees grafted is small, but that in no way affects the
possibilities. Certain varieties are prized as much as chestnuts, or
even more, and the price of acorns is set by the price of chestnuts,
just as the price of cornmeal sets the price for chestnut meal. I never
got crop records for a solid acre of oak trees, but the performance of
individual trees gives rise to the belief that the acorn crop in Europe
and America is worthy of careful study. I saw a tree--a single
tree--that I was assured bore more than twelve hundred quarts in a
single year, thirty-seven bushels. It is hard to get the yield in a
large forest, but this tree was alone. Its sweep was seventeen yards,
its yearly production seemed to average over twenty bushels, which was
worth as much as an acre of corn in any of our states. Wherever I found
an isolated tree, I found its production to be surprisingly large, and I
got my information from a variety of sources. It seemed to be one of the
most important forage trees.

As to the Persian walnut, it is reported to be a small nut of almost no
value in its wild state. It grows around the world between the belt of
the orange and the belt of the white pin