MOST INTERESTING FOREST PRODUCTS 141 
especially foreigners, start out for the purpose of 
gathering chestnuts for the market and close to the 
city quite an industry may be built up. From the 
lower boughs the nuts may be beaten off with poles but 
the upper limbs must be shaken. After the nuts have 
reached the ground the leaves and débris beneath are 
raked away in heaps and the partially opened burrs put 
into a separate pile so that they may be examined. The 
loose chestnuts are put into bags and later sorted in 
order to separate the defective and wormy specimens. 
The chestnut gatherers as a rule sell their crop by 
weight, fifty-six pounds being the average bushel and 
the average price received is about four cents a pound 
or two dollars and twenty-five cents a bushel. In a good 
chestnut country a family of four or five persons will 
earn as much as ten dollars per day. It is a family job 
primarily because children can be useful in sorting the 
nuts, or extracting chestnuts from the half-open burrs. 
Practically every part of the East has its favorite 
nut. In the Middle Atlantic States in addition to 
chestnuts, walnuts and hickory nuts are found while in 
the Southern States the pecan may be added to the 
above and in the Southwest, Indians collect large 
quantities of the edible seed of the nut pine. At the 
present time the nut industry in this country bids 
fair to increase and there are a few orchardists who 
make a business of raising nuts for the market or 
propagating pedigree trees. With large areas of in- 
ferior mountain land throughout the Atlantic States, 
the raising of nuts offers a splendid solution of the 
land problem, for such a crop needs much less labor 
than an orchard, and aside from furnishing food for 
swine or man the lumber growth is an added profit. 
Naval Stores—In early Colonial times among the 
