A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 135 



and it is especially necessary that, when used for pickling, they should be 

 gathered before the shells have become too hard. The right time for doing so 

 is while the nuts can be pierced through and through in every part with a 

 needle. In addition to these uses, Walnuts are also employed in confectionery. 

 In Auvergne, according to M. Baltet, certain establishments for preserved 

 fruits prepare the skinned kernels of Walnuts with sugar, making the preserve 

 up in short-necked, wide-mouthed bottles. In Belgian Limbourg also Walnuts 

 are sold in the green state to the confectioners. At Portiers three oil factories 

 send out annually one hundred and thirty-two thousand gallons of Walnut oil. 

 With the seven thousand five hundred acres of Walnut plantations on alluvial 

 and calcareous soils, the department of Lot produces annually about eight 

 thousand and sixty-six tons of W^alnuts and employs one hundred oil-pressing 

 machines. A \Valnut tree in good bearing yields annually about one hundred 

 and seventy-six pounds weight of nuts, and the proportion o/ oil which is 

 extracted at the factories is equal to about eighteen per cent, of the weight of 

 the nuts. The pressed residue of the nuts is used, like linseed oil cake, for 

 feeding cattle and also as a manure. Fattening poultry, especially turkeys, by 

 means of Walnuts, is a practice well known amongst the Walloon poultry 

 raisers, and in country places poultry are frequently thus prepared for special 

 family dinners or festive meetings of friends. 



It is evident that from a commercial point of view the Walnut is an ex- 

 cellent kind of fruit, the culture of which has, perhaps, been somewhat 

 neglected of late. Statistics show that in France the production in the year 

 1885 amounted to over eighty thousand tons, representing a money value of 

 twenty -five millions of francs (^1,000,000). 



The Walnut is usually propagated from seed, but, as in the case of other 

 fruit trees properly so called, the special qualities of the parent tree are not 

 reproduced by this mode of increase, although it may be admitted that by a 

 careful selection of the seed parents a certain amount of constancy might be 

 attained in the reproduction of varieties. At present, superior varieties, the 

 fruit of which has a higher market value than the ordinary kinds, must be 

 propagated by grafting. Grafted Walnut trees are much more productive than 

 those raised from seed, and this forms an additional inducement to employ this 

 mode of reproduction when local conditions create a preference for one variety 

 more than another, either on account of the fine appearance of the fruit, the 

 quality of the kernel, or the earliness or lateness of the time of ripening. 

 Walnut grafting is no novelty, the practice having been recommended by 

 Olivier de Serves about A. D. 1600, but the operation is not a very easy one, 

 and, to be successful, requires dexterity and experience. 



The methods employed are those known as pipe grafting and cleft graft- 

 ing. One of the most successful ways is a modification of cleft grafting in 



