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Orleans for sugar and molasses and boated them up to this point to 

 sujoply his neighbors with sweetening, as they sorely missed the maple 

 kindred product of old New England, whence the most of them came. 



Nearly three score year ago I visited these uncles of mine in 

 Greene County, Illinois, and the objects that most took my childish fancy 

 were the black walnuts on the one farm and the hazel nuts on the 

 other. When time to return home came, my treasures to take with 

 me were specimens of both; but m^y father said' the damp, clammy 

 things should not go into the trunk. However, when we reached home 

 my mother took them from the bottom of the trunk where she had 

 placed them, unknown to us both, and ordered my father to help me 

 pl.mt tliem, as my seven-year-old hands were not strong enough to 

 break the frozen ground with a heavy crowbar. 



All the black walnuts grew but one, and are now immense trees of 

 saw-lop size, bearing bounteous crops for many years, the jjarents of 

 all the black walnuts in the region. I liked the nuts so well that, when 

 a half century later. I l.eard of improved varieties, I procured some 

 seedling trees. These, as seedling trees usually are, were no better 

 than mine. The grafted trees which next came out retained the im- 

 proved cracking qualities and flavor of the origiinal. I consider them 

 the equal in every way of their English brother. When an apple tree 

 dies, I usually replace it witli a Thomas black walnut, the best for my 

 locality. They should be planted on every house lot and farm, along 

 with the improved hazels. 



The common hazels were small and retained tlieir husks and, after 

 trying tlieir filbert brothers from every land, I found two of this 

 family to my liking, one from the Middle Northwest, which drops 

 readily from its envelope and the other from Biltmore, North Carolina, 

 of immense size but not so readily separating from its husk. I have 

 over a hundred of the genus Corylus. They bear very young and 

 stand well the frosts of late spring and cold winters. To give you 

 an idea of their precocity, would say that a German variety set out 

 this season now has six. nuts on it. The Kentish Cob does the best 

 with me of the foreign kinds and falls early and readily to the ground. 

 They are long and beautiful nuts. I find it a good plan to bend the 

 pliant branches of all the foreign varieties to the ground in the fall 

 and weigh them down with heavy flat stones. The deep snow covers 

 them up and the male catkins are saved for furnishing pollen in the 



