Prof. H. E. Van Deman about 24 years ago. 
Prof. Van Deman organized and was the first head 
of the division of pomology in the department of 
agriculture, Washington, D. C., and he served as a 
judge of exhibitions of nuts and fruit in prac- 
tically every state in the Union and at all the na- 
tional expositions since 1876 to the time of his 
death, in 1915. 
In this article Mr. Van Deman described the 
almost universal failures to grow filberts in va- 
rious eastern and southern states and ended by 
saying, that before giving up all hopes of grow- 
ing filberts in the United States, they should be 
tried in the territory about Puget Sound, Wash- 
ington, where the climate is similar to that of Kent, 
England, famous for its fine filbert orchards. 
Being of an experimental mind, I sent to 
Felix Gillet for a few trial filbert trees in Feb- 
ruary, 1894, and planted them in Western Wash- 
ington. Among these were two Du Chilly trees, 
which proved to be the first trees of that variety 
brought to the Northwest. In later years I have 
added other varieties, including the valuable Bar- 
celona, and the development and fruiting of these 
experimental trees were closely watched. 
While my plantings were limited, the indica- 
tions plainly showed the climate to be highly favor- 
able to the development of the trees and at the 
same time the yield and quality of the nuts of some 
varieties proved decidedly encouraging. 
