95 



tli.it the chestnut pays the best in southern Illinois. He plants them 

 on rouo;h ,ind hilly land, difficult to cultivate, pasturing with sheep, 

 and has had very good success. He does not worry about the chest- 

 nut blight, since the chestnut is not native here and there is such a 

 great distance between the blight ridden East and Illinois. 



Mr. Buckman was an amateur horticulturist, in the work for the 

 love of it. On his land he had nearly two thousand varieties of 

 apples and hundreds of varieties of peaches, plums, pears, cher- 

 ries, grajDes, small fruits, and nuts collected from all over the world. 

 I was much interested to study the fine pecan and chestnut trees 

 growing and producing good crops as well as the persimmon and 

 papaw trees, of which he had a number of rare varieties. I was 

 able last spring to secure cuttings of a number of rather rare papaw 

 varieties which I sent to Doctor Zimmerman for propagation at the 

 request of Doctor Fairchild. 



Mr. Buckman recently died and there is now a movement on foot 

 to secure, either through the University or the Horticultural Society, 

 as far .is possible, all the valuable data which he had been collecting 

 for years. 



There are several other men interested in nuts as a commercial 

 proposition in Illinois, such as O. H. Casper of Anna and Judge W. O. 

 Potter of Marion. I recently visited these orchards. Mr. Casper has 

 mostly pecans and walnuts growing in sod. They are from six to 

 eiffht years old and would have borne tliis season if weather conditions 

 had been favorable. 



.Fudge Potter has over twenty acres of pecans interplaiitcd witli 

 chestnuts and filberts. For part of the orchard this is the fifth grow- 

 ing season. The trees are growing vigorously and make a very im- 

 pressive showing. I counted thirt3'-nine nuts on a representative 

 Thomas black walnut tree. The filberts look especially promising. 

 Although the weather at blooming time was unfavorable a fair crop 

 of nearly a peck was gathered from four or five bushes of a late bloom- 

 ing imported variety. Judge Potter is also growing another orchard 

 using apples as fillers between black walnut trees. This experiment 

 will be watched with great interest since it will be of great value in 

 showing future possibilities in nut growing in Illinois. 



Now as to some of the things we are trying to do at the experiment 

 station at Ui^bana. This will be necessarily a progress report. I am 

 Biaking a survey of the state to find promising individuals of the dif- 



