The Walnuts and the Hickories 



whence it spread to England and finally to America. The tree 

 is grown for lumber, for ornament, and for its fruit in the countries 

 that feel the warm breath of the Japan Current and the Gulf 

 Stream. The best nuts come from France and Italy. In England 

 the nuts are generally pickled green, as the season is too short to 

 insure their ripening. The English walnut, like the English elm, 

 came to us via England, and got its name en route. Neither 

 species is a native of that island. Importations of the nuts came 

 to us also through England until recent years. 



The wealth of Europe has been increased by the enforced 

 planting of walnut trees. In the seventeenth century in certain 

 countries there was a law requiring a young man to produce a 

 certificate of his having planted a certain number of walnut trees 

 before he could obtain permission to marry! The names of this 

 tree are full of tradition and poetry. The English had the nuts 

 before they introduced the trees. " IValnut" means "a nut 

 brought from a foreign country." "Juglans" is a contraction of 

 Jovis glans, "the acorn of Jove" — for so the Greeks and Romans 

 esteemed it. To extend its culture through allied countries was a 

 work that rulers busied themselves about. Nux regia was the 

 growers' name for the new tree, "because these nuts were brought 

 to them by kings." 



Through centuries of cultivation, many improved varieties 

 of these Persian walnuts have arisen. Parkinson describes in 

 1640 a kind of "French wallnuts, which are the greatest of any, 

 within whose shell are often put a paire of fine gloves neatly 

 foulded up together." Another variety he knew "whose shell 

 is so tender that it may easily be broken between one's fingers, 

 and the nut itself is very sweete." 



The culture of /. regia in southern California is highly special- 

 ised and very profitable. Irrigation and tillage are practised in 

 these orchards. Frost and walnut blight are the nut-growers' 

 chief enemies — unless the brokers who control prices may be 

 listed as a third. The nut crop of 1901 in four counties was about 

 6,000 tons, worth more than a million dollars. The tree grows 

 in the Southern States, and has proved hardy even in Massachu- 

 setts, but it is not cultivated commercially outside of California. 



Walnut lumber (of /. regia) has had a variable and interesting 

 history in Europe. The brown heart wood, always beautiful, 

 often waved and watered in lovely patterns and shadings, yet 



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