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soon. Years ago, thousands of hillsides in the East were covered with 

 groves of native chestnut trees bearing fine nuts but they are gone 

 now. 



The filbert seems to be fairly promising in the East. I have five 

 or six filbert bushes near my garage that bore about a half a bushel 

 of large, well-filled nuts this year. If I had ten acres of these bushes 

 that bore like these, I would have a better return from them than I 

 would oil' of all the rest of my farm. I believe if we could get the 

 farmers in the East in the proper latitudes each to plant one acre of 

 filberts with an occasional native hazel among them for pollenization 

 that they would get a big return from this acre at very little expense. 

 Therefore, I believe the filbert has a commercial future. But when 

 we speak of growing nuts commercially we have to face the matter of 

 dollars and cents and the return on the investment. We do not always 

 put the things that we enjoy doing on a cash basis and should not, but 

 when we recommend the planting of nut trees for profit, we have to 

 cope with practical facts. 



The State of North Carolina is carrying on a program that I think 

 is a very excellent one. They have an organization there to get the 

 farmers to plant a few nut trees. They have an association that ad- 

 vises as to varieties and furnishes the trees in order that the farmer 

 may make no mistakes as to varieties and soil. The county agents co- 

 operate with the farmers and the State Agricultural College, and if 

 we could get that sort of a program Avorked out in some of the 

 nortliCrn states, we could soon get nut culture in the North on an in- 

 telligent and probably successful basis. I do not believe that anyone 

 can see the thousands, of fine pecan trees in souther;i Illinois and 

 Missouri, Indiana and Kentucky without feeling that there has been a 

 great neglect and that the scientists of the country ought to have been 

 at work many years ago trying to get these trees propagated and dis- 

 tributed for test purposes, at least. I still have hopes that we will 

 finally get an intelligent, active interest stimulated in nut culture in 

 the North and that the farmers of the future will all have their nut 

 orchards as an adjinict to their general farming and then, time and ex- 

 ])eiience will lead the way and show us the best and most successful 

 varieties to put out in large commercial orchards. 



