e 100th
meridian. This is attested by the fact that some of this land has been
settled three times and abandoned twice to the wreckage of hundreds of
thousands of private fortunes. Yet the tree with its far-reaching roots
and ability to store energy can survive in much of this area where
grains are so very uncertain. The mesquite, yet a tree weed over much of
this area, has one species which produces a nutritious seed that has
been used for bread stuff by unknown generations of Indians. The screw
bean, a legume, with a nutritious seed, grows from El Paso to the
Imperial Valley; while the broad leafed honey locust, with a seed
closely akin to that of the carob, or St. John's Bread, will also grow
over wide areas in the arid southwest. Five varieties of the small but
productive wild almond have been found by a Government botanist growing
upon the shores of Pyramid Lake; while Frank Myer, Plant Explorer of the
Department, brings back from Turkestan accounts of wild almonds
producing good fruit on mountain slopes with a rainfall of 8 inches a
year. These productive plants, several of them legumes, adjusted by
nature to this region, with allied species in other continents, seem to
hold before the plant breeder the possibilities of hundreds of thousands
of square miles of Western orchard ranges of high productivity, rather
than the present would-be grass-ranges of low and declining
productivity.

I believe that the development of a tree crop agriculture offers one of
the greatest possibilities in constructive conservation of natural
resources. Individuals cannot be depended upon to do it. The work is too
slow. A man might by decades of work create species that would be, if
fully utilized, worth a hundred million dollars a year to a state like
Pennsylvania; yet he would be unable to realize personal gain from the
results, provided he had secured them. Institutions must do it. It is
like the Geological Survey and the Census Bureau and Agricultural
Experiment Stations, which depend upon appropriations. The
appropriations depend upon the realization of the importance of the
work. There are interesting examples of similar work already in
operation, of which the following might be mentioned: The Agricultural
Experiment Station of Arizona has started a twenty-four-year series of
experiments in breeding the date palm. In North Dakota, where the
blizzards kill nearly all the ordinary fruits, an experimenter has done
much work in the