THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



from the English varieties, and a cross 

 obtained suitable for our wants, if not 

 so fine as the British parent. In the 

 same way perhaps the condition of the 

 native Canadian chestnuts and walnuts 

 (either the black or the butternut) 

 might be ameliorated. A cross be- 

 tween the two latter might be effected 

 with good results. Many of the nut- 

 bearing trees, such as the walnut and 

 filbert, having unisexual flowers, the 

 process of hybridizing would not be 

 difficult if pollen could be obtained. 

 Where the male and female organs are 

 situate in the same flower, as in the 

 grape for instance, of course the flower 

 has to be artificially opened and the 

 male organs removed before they are 

 sufficiently advanced for the pollen to 

 impregnate the female portion of the 

 flower. 



The Juglans regia is the variety cul- 

 tivated for its nuts in Europe. Its 

 home is supposed to have been origin- 

 ally in Persia or the Levant, from 

 which it was no doubt carried to Eng- 

 land by the Romans. The English 

 nuts are now said to be better flavoured 

 than those grown on the continent of 

 Europe. The word Juglans is sup- 

 posed to be a contraction of Jovis glans^ 

 " nut of Jupiter." J. regia is by no 

 means a hardy tree. It is in fact so 

 tender that it flourishes better in the 

 south of England than in the north ; 

 nevertheless the writer has seen some 

 fine trees of this species in Suffolk, 

 Norfolk and Lancashire, but the trees 

 of Kent and Surrey have the repu- 

 tation of producing the finest nuts. 

 There is a record of a walnut tree 

 which grew in Welwyn, Herefordshire, 

 whose umbrageous branches covered an 

 area of over two thousand square yards. 

 There is still standing at Balaclava, in 

 the Crimea, a walnut tree said to be 

 upwards of one thousand years old. 

 This tree yields its proprietor a yearly 

 average of eighty thousand nuts; it 



has been known to produce as many as 

 one hundred thousand in a single season. 



There is one way in which our nuts 

 could be utilized as an article of com- 

 merce, and that is as a pickle. Both 

 the black walnut and butternut when 

 in that stage of growth, just before the 

 shell begins to harden, while it is yet 

 sufficiently soft to admit of its being 

 penetrated with ease by a knitting 

 needle, is gathered and converted into 

 a most delicious pickle. When the 

 nuts are ripe they are sold on the mar- 

 ket in Ottawa for about one dollar per 

 bag, but as a pickle they would bring 

 in the English market, and perhaps in 

 Canada, ten or fifteen times that sum. 

 The writer has walnuts pickled, as well 

 as the ripe nuts with the outer shell on, 

 preserved for the Colonial and Indian 

 Exhibition to be held in London next 

 summer. 



The walnut of England is a slow 

 growing tree, and as some one has said 

 of pears, though perhaps not truth- 

 fully, 



" He who plants pears 

 Must leave it to his heirs " 



to eat them ; so in Britain one genera- 

 tion plants the J. regia and the next 

 partakes of the nuts. This is by no 

 means the case with J. cinerea, as I 

 have myself planted the nuts and have 

 gathered fruit from the tree seven years 

 afterwards. I have now two trees 

 eleven years old which yielded last sea- 

 son over a bushel of nuts. The older 

 the walnut tree becomes the more nuts 

 they produce, but it takes more than 

 one generation to obtain a tree that will 

 produce one hundred thousand. 



The paper-shelled hickory is a pleas- 

 ant nut. The tree, though slow of 

 growth, is of a very clean, handsome 

 appearance both of bark and leaf, and 

 should be more extensively cultivated. 

 The chestnut is indigenous to the west- 

 ern part of this Province, and why it 

 is not more cultivated it is difficult to 



