60 



His greatest worry is that there are too few mouths to feed. There 

 is not a great popular demand for nuts as substitutes for other kinds of 

 foods. Even if there were obvious and excellent reasons why nuts 

 would make better foods than the kinds that the American people are 

 using at the present time, it would be difficult to convince them that 

 they should make a substitution, and it would be even more difficult to 

 get them to put the idea into practice after they were convinced. Few 

 tilings in the history of a people come about more slowly than do their 

 voluntary changes in food. 



But to drop the question of wh.it to do with nuts after they are 

 grown, and consider the matter of how successfully they may be grown 

 in this part of the country, what is the situation ? We find a number of 

 choice species thoroughly well adapted to this part of the country. 

 Some are indigenous; others have been introduced. Of the indigenous 

 species there are as yet few variety orchards of bearing age. Such 

 plantings as have thus far given a profit are of varieties either wholly 

 of Old World parentage or of hybrid forms resulting from American 

 X foreign crosses. 



It ordinarily takes a long time to convert a wild s})ecies of plant into 

 one producing a profitable commodity under cultivation. The only in- 

 stance in which it has thus far been accomplished with an American nut- 

 bearing tree or shrub to great extent is in the cise of the pecan in the 

 South. That species is now under cultivation over a vast area, but 

 the uncertainties that are still not overcome are very great in number, 

 and very little knowledge regarding its best methods of culture, its 

 varieties, etc., -can yet be put down as being so definite as not to be 

 subject to further change. 



In the North much progress has been made, considering the mag- 

 nitude of the task. The Northern Nut Growers Association, aided by 

 the State and Federal Departments, has long been seeking out the most 

 promising seedlings for use as horticultural varieties. It has dis- 

 covered a rather large number and has compiled a great fund of in- 

 formation as to the history, apparent merits, and general character 

 of each. Much has also been learned about methods of propagation, all 

 of which is basic knowledge. 



So far as the development of a great commercial industry of nut 

 growing in the North is concerned, it must not be expected that con- 



