A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 25 



nuts no one can tell as yet, but there are native varieties which afford promises 

 sufficiently certain and flattering. Some of these, found in Tennessee, Penn- 

 sylvania and the mountains of Virginia, are nearly as big as horse chestnuts, 

 and have a most delicious flavor. Grafts from the trees bearing them produce 

 admirable results. It must be understood that grafts do not improve varieties, 

 merely maintaining them, so that the planter is able to gradually better his 

 stock by selecting those trees which bring forth the best fruit. Perhaps the 

 time may arrive when Chestnuts will contribute importantly to the food supply 

 of the United States, as they do now in Europe. There are many ways of using 

 them in cookery, and a number of recipes will be included in the government 

 report above referred to. They are made into soup, prepared as a pudding, 

 employed as a stuffing for birds, boiled and dipped in syrup for a conserve and 

 utilized in several other fashions. Now and then a Chestnut twig is found 

 which has a succession of burrs all along it instead of the usual two or three 

 that dangle together. The Department of Agriculture would be very much 

 obliged to any one who will send to it such a freak. It means simply that all 

 of the female blossoms along the ' ' spike ' ' that bears the burrs have been fer- 

 tilized by the pollen. Ordinarily only two or three of -them are so fertilized. 

 If some grafts of the unusual growth described can be secured, possibly the 

 producing power of Chestnut trees may be multiplied. 



Much is also being done in the cultivation of Hickory nuts. Nurserymen 

 are planting and grafting the young trees, which they sell to growers. No 

 orchards are as yet in bearing, but there are wild groves of fine varieties in 

 Ohio, which are regularly harvested. There are Shagbarks in Iowa, of large 

 size, which have such thin shells that they can readily be cracked -by grasping 

 two together in the hand. From such stock, grafts are taken by the growers, 

 and the process of progressive selection will doubtless develop some very 

 remarkable results in the course of a few years. Stories have reached the 

 division of pomology of Hickory nuts in the Wabash valley as big as one's 

 two fists. Much anxiety was felt to secure some of them, but it was finally 

 learned that this estimate of size included the husks, the kernels being small 

 and almost worthless. 



Ohio is a remarkable State for nuts. A new kind of Black Walnut has 

 been discovered out there, which is probably destined to be highly prized in 

 the future. By a freak of nature one-half of its shell is not developed, nor the 

 kernel on that side, the result being a pear-shaped nut filled with a single meat 

 somewhat the shape of a peanut, though bigger. The important objection to 

 ordinary Black Walnuts is that they are divided in the middle by a wall or 

 shell so constructed that it is almost impossible to get the kernel out whole. 

 This freak variety has only to be cracked to yield the meat entire. It is to be 

 cultivated and may be expected to appear on the market by the time the pres- 

 ent generation of babies is grown up. 



