both had a small
quantity of thorns when they were growing wild. After they were
propagated vegetatively the thorns, of course, were eliminated by taking
scion wood from above the thorns. But in general in our state, the
thornless trees--and we do have a lot of thornless trees growing
wild--have a higher sugar content in the pods than do the trees with
thorns.

I just wanted to give you a general idea of what we have done with
honeylocust in Alabama. In 1938 the TVA sent down some Millwood and
Calhoun for test planting. We put those trees in two different types of
planting. We had an integrated planting where we were trying to select
at that time some good pasture plants, and, of course, we had something
like a hundred different species in the one planting. The trees were
planted relatively thick, but the larger trees were planted longer
distances apart, and the intermediate trees intermediate distances
apart, and then we had shrubs coming in under those. It was supposed to
have been a three-story type of planting, black walnut in the upper
story, honeylocust as an intermediate and shrubs for the ground. We were
using different types of plums for the understory; then on the ground we
had _Lespedeza sericea_. But from that we did get several different
plant materials that did look promising, and we put the Calhoun
honeylocust and the Millwood honeylocust in with that planting for
trial, and they did so well that we expanded the honeylocust into
another planting. I am very sorry that this latter planting had to be
taken out.

Hillculture research went under in June of 1947, and the Horticulture
Department took this work over, and they thought they could not support
the honeylocust pasture program in Horticulture, and the plot, of
course, was pulled out and planted in peaches.

Anyway, we do have some information I'd like to give you. The Dairy
Department of the Alabama Experiment Station carried out quite an
extensive feeding test over a two-year period to find out the value of
these pods in the dairy ration. They substituted the honeylocust pods
ground. Professor Eaton of the Dairy Department assures me that none of
the seeds in those pods were cracked. They ground the pods with corn in
order to take up some of the excess honey that is in the back of these
pods so that they'd grind well, and they ground them in a hammermill,
and the burrs were running far enough apart so that he assures me that
very few of the seeds,