8 



CROPS THAT PAY. 



have been discovered ; and improved cultural methods adopted. And 

 this good work is to be continued with the encouragement ol tne 

 National Nut Growers' Association, lately organized, which means 

 that nut culture in the South, heretofore sadly neglected, wiU receive 

 the attention and support it so richly merits. 



PECAN FOUR YEARS OLD 



Many people in the Northern States do not know what a pecan 

 is. Those who do, however, are apt to call it the best of nuts, even 

 when they have never tasted one of those big, plump, grove-grown 

 fruits, so superior in every way to the common, wild pecan. Like 

 the early French explorers and writers we naturally compare the 

 pecan with the almond, walnut and chestnut, increasing quantities 

 of which are annually imported into the United States. These Euro- 

 pean nuts are very good, in their way, but nut eaters who know the 

 pecan at its best, unhesitatingly declare it a better nut than either 

 of the others ; in short, the best nut in the world. 



Pecan gathering in the South is a yearly event of importance. 

 In Louisiana and Texas the nutting is on a grand scale; it means 

 more than "the younger people making holiday." The pecan crop 

 of these two States, alone, amounts to millions of pounds, and the 

 small army of men, women and children which invades the forest 

 "with bag and sack and basket, great and small," in quest of Nature's 

 bounty, find remunerative employment during the season. There 

 is great competition between rival "nutters." To get the nuts the 

 trees are shaken, or their branches beaten with long poles. Such as 

 remain in the husks after dropping are tossed into a heap and 

 threshed to loosen them from their four-parted coverings, many of 



