Mr. Harris: I don't think the question is so much one of planting in fence corners as that we have a great deal of waste land on which the soil is very well adapted to growing nut trees. I know that sometimes in growing peach trees it is almost impossible to cultivate them. I know places in western Maryland where the rocks are lying so that you can hardly plough, and yet the soil is fertile and particularly adapted in some places for peach trees, and would be for chestnut trees. They have there a system of cultivation much as if you used the plough, and yet they are on steep hillsides. There is no reason, I think, why nut trees shouldn't grow there as well as on the level field where you can cultivate every inch of soil.
The Chairman: They are looked after, that's the whole thing.
Mr. Gowing: I come from New Hampshire and we have what used to be an old farm, but it is now a pasture and the soil is quite a potash soil, I think, amongst the rocks, and there's some apple trees planted there by the original man that worked this place. It was too rough to plough, but they have borne us as good apples some years as we have had on the place; and on this same piece of twenty acres or so, there's some chestnut trees more than two feet through that were cut off when the land was cleared, and they must have done well, for they grew to be such enormous trees.
The Chairman: The trees are planted on this same old stump land?
Mr. Gowing: Yes, sir.
The Chairman: A great deal of stump land can be planted in this way.
Mr. Corsan: That wouldn't be planting them along roadsides and in fence corners.
The Chairman: No, they would be looked after; the whole thing is looking after them.
A Member: My idea is that there would be very few nut trees planted if every one was to start his own trees. They put off planting the trees even when they can get them at the nurseries, and if they had to start their own nurseries there wouldn't be one planted to where there's 10,000 now; and I think that in the end the nurserymen are going to attend to the planting of trees and the other people are going to attend to growing them. Maybe I'm mistaken but did this Government ever produce any trees? Prof. Smith spoke of appropriating money and letting the Government get us some new variety. Hasn't it always been private individuals who get the new varieties? I have been trying to think of some fruit tree, apple or something, that a state or the Government has propagated.
The Chairman: In this country I believe the Government has never done it, but in some parts of Europe, especially Switzerland, the taxes of some towns are paid by the trees along the roadside; but there every man has to report on his own trees and the proceeds go to support the town, and the taxes of certain small towns are actually paid today by roadside trees; but this is in a country where land is valuable, and every tree is under the direct supervision of a citizen who must report on it, and the product of that tree goes to the Government, he giving his labor instead of paying taxes.