i8 A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 



France and Italy, and probably nearly or quite as many Walnuts. Hundreds 

 of thousands of bushels of these nuts are exported, and we are pleased to 

 obtain a share and pay a high price for them, although these nut trees will 

 grow here as freely, and bear as abundantly, as in any country of Europe. 

 They may not thrive in our extreme Northern border States, but they certainly 

 do in many of the Northern, and all through the Middle or Southern States. 



But it is not necessary to go to Europe or Asia for valuable nut-bearing 

 trees, for our forests are full of them, and we have several native species 

 worthy of extended cultivation. Our native Chestnut is superior to the 

 foreign in flavor, although not as large, consequently does not command as 

 high a price in the market, but it is becoming more and more valuable as the 

 demand increases, and the supply decreases with the destruction of our original 

 forests. The same is true of the Shellbark, Hickory and the Pecan nut, and all 

 three should have long since been extensively planted as roadside trees in 

 place of the hundreds of worthless varieties and species to be seen in such 

 positions in all the thickly settled parts of our country. Of course where the 

 European or Asiatic Walnut will thrive, and the larger varieties of the 

 foreign Chestnut, we would give them a prominent position not because they 

 are more ornamental than the native kinds, but their nuts command a better 

 price, and this is an incentive for plantirig and future care not to be ignored in 

 any community nor under any circumstances. 



It may take a little more time to secure a crop of nuts than of the ordinary 

 kind of farm crops, but a nut tree, when large enough to yield from five to ten 

 dollars' worth of nuts annually, will not occupy any more land than is required 

 to produce a dollar's worth of wheat, or other kind of grain. In addition to 

 this there is no annual plowing and seeding to be done for each ensuing crop, 

 for when a nut tree is once established it is good for a hundred years or more, 

 increasing in value and productiveness with age, and when, finally, its useful- 

 ness ends as a producer of food, its wood is w T orth as much as that of any of our 

 purely ornamental trees. If our farmers and others, who were planting shade 

 trees twenty -five and fifty years ago, had thought of this and put the idea to a 

 practical test, the roadside trees alone would, to-day, yield many millions of 

 dollars' worth of nuts, which we are compelfed to obtain elsewhere. 



Taking this view of the subject, I ask, in all sincerity, if it is not about 

 time that a change was made in the kind of trees generally planted along our 

 highways ? Our ancestors in this country may have been very careless and 

 unwise in the selection of the kinds of trees planted for such purposes, and, 

 however much we may regret it, we should strive to remedy defects, keeping in 

 mind that posterity will also have something to say about our plantings. 



