“ My imperial mother Georgia is a land of surpassing loveliness and thus has for ages been the inspiration of poets and painters too.
The southerners dream of beauty is the magnolia and who can tint her roses or paint the morning glory that points its purple bugle towards the sky as though to sound the revelie for a waking world. No prima donna has ever yet entertained the crowned heads of Europe with such music as that divine melody with which the mocking bird greets the coming dawn. ”

“ No other orchard will in a comparatively short time appear more like a natural grove than the hazel on account of its characteristic compact growth and dense foliage, so attractive and inviting to our song and other insectivorous birds for hatching and rearing their young, the constant warbling of the different birds from early spring until late in summer, the building of their nests, the feeding of the young, all affords endless pleasure and enjoyment to the close observer. ”

“ Ladies and Gentlemen of the Northern Nut Growers Association. When I face men and women who are doing things in agriculture I feel a peculiar degree of embarrassment. I do not know why but I suppose it is because what I have done, what little I have done in bringing in these new things, has never enabled me to get to the bottom of any of the things that I have brought in. In other words I feel that I am in the presence of a number of men who know down to the very smallest minutiae the business that they are engaged in. Now I do not know these minutiae about plants. ”

“ You gentlemen are missing a great opportunity if you do not get squarely behind the American Forestry Association and help it spread the message of the tree, Nature's masterpiece and greatest gift to man, and in doing so urge the value of planting trees that produce food wherever such trees can give better service than those which do not produce food. ”

“ I am not to any extent a nut grower although I have nuts planted in my garden and hope that my heirs will reap the fruit of my trees. I went into the business rather too late. I have been so busy all my life that I did not have time to do some things. But I am very greatly interested in increasing the consumption of nuts. I have been popularizing the idea of nut consumption and making it a staple article of food for almost fifty years, and I have been continually faced with this objection that if we get all the people eating nuts there would not be enough nuts for them to eat. ”

“ Every school boy and girl in the land would be delighted to get them for planting.
The supply would not equal one hundredth part of one per cent of the demand for them. Then select throughout the country other special or historic trees of various kinds or varieties of nuts and still I am sure the supply would not begin to equal the demand. Long ago I began to arrange for nut crops from some of these historic trees, planted by Washington at his beautiful Mount Vernon home, now the Mecca for prince or pauper and all those millions who love the freedom of glorious America. ”

“ It is indeed a great pleasure to meet you all here in the interest of Horticulture, one of the greatest, and, by the way, the oldest industries of which we have any record, since Adam and Eve were engaged in it, and in the interest of one of the greatest branches of that industry, Nut Culture, and this in the greatest city on Earth, because it is the seat of Government of the greatest nation on Earth. ”

“ Those who will do their share, and there are thousands of them if the subject can be properly presented, can add largely to the food supply of the nation, and provide real delicacies for every table in the homes of the poor as well as in the mansions of the rich. It would be but a few years before we would have in size, and quality the aristocrats of the nut family, in walnuts, hickory nuts, butternuts, even beech nuts, the same as in fruits we have the Bartlett pear, the Northern Spy apple, the Naval orange, the Crawford peach, or the Brighton grape. ”

“ In the first place, it has brought me into association with a delightful group of workers. I want to express to you the pleasure I have had in meeting the various nut growers of the northern part of this country and noting the hearty way in which they are ready to co-operate in solving the nut insect problems. The field of work is interesting because there appear to be in sight no insect pests that promise to embarrass or overwhelm the nut grower. We have a few quite serious insect problems, perhaps none more serious than that occasioned by our old acquaintance, the "chestnut worm." ”

“ A study of the relative protein content of nuts, milk, and meat shows that, pound for pound, the almond, beech nut and walnut contain on an average as much protein as does meat and five times as much as is found in milk, and protein which from rat feeding experiments appears to be of equal value. The chestnut, the chinquapin, the filbert, the hickory, pecan and pine nut contain on an average as much protein as is found in fish, while the butternut, the peanut and the pignolia contain twice as much or 50 per cent more than is found in the best of meat. ”

“ Carry this message into every city, village and school district and the good work will be duplicated thousands of times and then the movement in which we have so earnestly engaged will have brought forth fruit in great abundance so that even the great majority of those living today, and certainly the generations to come must give this organization and its founders great credit for real and lasting benefits that will prevail for centuries to come.
We all desire at this very important period in our existence as an Association, to strengthen our forces and enlarge the scope of our work. ”

“ It is not only a nut tree but a magnificent ornamental tree and grows to a very large size. We have used it as an avenue tree leading to our plant introduction gardens in Chico because it colors up so beautifully in the autumn and the spring. In the spring the tips of these leaves and branches are a brilliant pink and in the autumn it turns a gorgeous scarlet. It is destined to be one of the best landscape trees of California in our opinion. It grows to be centuries old. ”

“ My grapes and peaches ripen well this fall, though we as all others had a late spring and my Indiana and Iowa pecans actually grew 2 feet from terminal buds.
Were I an old man of 80 I would plant nut trees to the exclusion of every other work. First, I would be growing a crop of food 150 years after my death. Second, I believe that every man who has vitality to live over 80 has been a bad man in his youth and he owes it to the world. Third, it is a healthy occupation, stooping down and digging and takes the rust and poisons out of the system. ”

“ In fact I have every reason to believe that grafted hazel-plants of some varieties, will be more prolific and bear more regular, but have had so far no proof of it, but will do more grafting of other varieties to establish the fact more positive and report the result later. For the buying public at the present time, plants raised from layers on their own roots should be preferable and layering as a method of propagating the hazel-plants resorted to until the general public gets more and better acquainted and familiar with the growing of hazel-plants. ”

“ Nuts are the most important of all tree crops because they are the richest natural food substance known. A nut is Nature's supreme effort to pack as much nourishment as she can into the smallest possible space for the nourishment of the future young plant. That some people are aware of these food values is evidenced in the nationwide tree balloting now being conducted by the American Forestry Association for the selection of a national tree. In this voting nut bearing trees are in the lead. ”

“ There is nothing more fascinating in the world than to take one crop and learn to know it "down to the ground." It is coming to be one of the greatest things in the imagination of man, this grappling with the fundamental problems of agriculture which are wrapped up in the varieties of the plants that we grow. ”

“ The meat industry and the milk supply are so closely related that both are influenced by the same causes. Both meat and milk are certain to become scarcer and more costly. And while it is most desirable that milk should continue to constitute a part of the human bill of fare [Pg 92] and that its use should be encouraged and if possible increased, it is certain vegetable substitutes for both meat and milk will be increasingly in demand as pasture lands shrink in area and the world's population and consequent demand for food cereals increase. ”

“ In the Northwest, the filbert is receiving intensive attention at the hands of a considerable number of skilled horticulturists. The species is making rapid strides and in a short while will probably rank fourth in importance with reference to the extent to which it has been developed horticulturally. Possibly because of the extent to which it is common over the United States, the black walnut might properly now be rated as fourth as that nut has as great, if not a greater, range and is of interest to more people in this country than is any other one species of nut. ”

“ The salvation of the future is more and more food from trees and less and less from animal sources. The day is fast passing when the farm consists of a tobacco barn, a pig pen, a cow stable and a hennery. From living upon a badly selected type of food we fear the flu and other diseases. No disease will ever come out of a nut tree. ”

“ The very fact that there are many problems in Nut Culture to be worked out makes the industry the more interesting for those who are not looking for an easy get-rich-quick scheme. We have accomplished some things in the line of propagation of pecans which were said to be impossible only a few years ago, and they now seem easy. The problems you will have to work out in the Northern pecan section, as it appears to me, are selection and development of suitable varieties for your climate. ”

“ There will be failures caused by climatic or atmospheric disturbances in our hazel orchards as well as in all other orchards which we cannot control nor prevent, but that should not discourage us as long as the prospects of fair crops are otherwise all right, the selecting of varieties, the proper pruning of our plants, the control of insects and the location of our hazel orchard is all in our power and should, if properly exercised, almost guarantee a fair crop and insure a fair profit from each acre so planted, providing the proper varieties are selected. ”

“ Such an one is the rational development of nut culture in our Northern States. Since the scouring of our chestnut forests by the Asiatic chestnut blight has practically eliminated that nut from consideration for orchard planting in the infected territory until resistant varieties yielding good crops of nuts of acceptable quality are obtained or developed, we can hardly say with assurance that we have any nut of proved adaptability in sight which is worthy of planting on an extensive scale for its crop alone, on productive agricultural land in the Northern States. ”

“ Hazels might be used for interplanting among chestnut or hickory trees with no danger that the hazel nuts would become infested by the weevils that develop in the chestnuts or hickory nuts. This habit of the weevils is greatly to the advantage of the person who would plant a particular kind of nut outside its natural range, or at a considerable distance from any other trees of its kind. He could do so with reasonable assurance that the weevil attacking his species of nut would not occur upon his trees until brought into the locality by artificial means. ”

“ So let us make trees, particularly nut bearing trees, the memorials or the proper setting for memorials to the men who offered their lives to their country in the World War. Let us line our highways with trees and make them Roads of Remembrance. In this way the trees will impress their value upon millions of our people. Put these trees where they can spread the message of production and beautification combined. ”