133 THE NUT CULTUEIST. 



Spakish filbert. — Nut very large, oblong; shell 

 thick ; husk smooth, longer than the nut. A very large^ 

 variety, sometimes confounded with the Eound cobnut 

 and its synonyms. 



PEESONAL EXPEEIENCB WITH PILBEETS. 



Believing that our failures are often of far more 

 value, in the line of education, than our successes, I 

 shall not hesitate to place my own on record as guide- 

 posts to those who may be seeking the most direct road 

 to success in nut culture. Having had a rather extended 

 and expensive experience in the cultivation of filberts, I 

 purpose giving a brief account of it here, with the hope 

 that it may save some other enthusiast from losing time 

 and money. 



My attention was first specially drawn to these nuts 

 in 1858, — while a resident of the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., 

 — ^by a neighbor who had a moderately large garden, on 

 three sides of which he had planted a row of English 

 filberts. These trees, at the tim.e, had attained a higlit 

 of about fifteen feet, with broad, open head% and they 

 rarely failed to produce a heavy crop of nuts, which sold 

 readily at very remunerative prices, for as they were 

 always gathered in the husks and sold by the pound, 

 the amount obtained from these few trees seemed to be 

 enormous, considering the small space they occupied in 

 this garden. The owner of these filbert trees, being an 

 Englishman by birth, never tired of showing his Eng- 

 lish filberts to visitors, and of descanting upon their value, 

 as well as upon the stupid indifference of the Yankees 

 in neglecting the cultivation of these valuable nuts. I 

 imbibed enough of my neighbor's enthusiasm to secure 

 a good stock of his plants, a few years later, for cultiva- 

 tion in my grounds here. The third year after planting, 

 quite a number of the bushes produced a fair crop of 

 nuts, but I noticed that an occasional shoot was affected 



