“ Just imagine, if you can, how the enthusiasm of the boys who may be fortunate enough to live in that little city, will more than bubble over as the nut gathering season approaches. I hope to be able to assist those people in their laudible enterprise and wish I may live to see it develop into the greatest thing of its kind in the United States. ”

“ I believe that the association can take credit to itself for having, by its publications and other means of influence, in large degree brought about this interest and action.
As for any commercial success in nut-growing, brought about by our activities, when we compare nut-growing in our field with pecan-growing in the South, and with walnut, almond, and perhaps filbert-growing, on the Pacific Coast, our results are meagre indeed. Of course commercial production, the building of a new industry of food supply for the people, is our ultimate goal. ”

“ From this time forward I believe we should adopt the policy of boldly advocating the planting of orchards of nut trees. The intending planter will decide for himself what variety he will plant, and as a guide he should judge from the wild varieties growing in his vicinity. By so doing he cannot go very far astray in what will be to him a new venture. Of course certain varieties will be restricted to certain limited areas. This applies particularly to the introduced varieties, as distinguished from the native nut-bearing trees. ”

“ I am not condemning what we have, for I believe that if as many years are spent by as many people in finding or developing a shagbark, we will have one that will surpass the pecan. But as the matter stands I am constrained to say that I do not know of a really good nut today that will stand the test of building an industry that will compete with the pecan. We must find or develop a couple of really good nuts that will compete, nuts that are large, smooth, shell thin enough to crack with the fingers, a white kernel that is plump and easily extracted. ”

“ Quality has been sacrificed for looks. Various illustrations of this come to mind with all of us.
I believe success will attend the planting of black walnut orchards. This will encourage others to follow with orchards of other nut-bearing trees. Orchards of all kinds of fruit trees are being planted each year and the planters are content to wait until the trees are large enough in order to reap the benefits thereof. But somehow the impression prevails in the minds of many people that a nut tree should show results and yield profits soon after it is planted. ”

“ I usually succeeded in gathering them on the hundred per cent basis.
I am interested in this subject today because of an innate love of trees and because the development of a tree crop agriculture offers a way to stop soil erosion. To me the worst of all economic sins is the destruction of resources, and the worst of all resource destructions is the destruction of the soil, our one great and ultimate resource. "After man the desert" has been truly said too often of many old lands.
Soil cover is after all about the only thing that man has as a basis for the support of his life on earth. ”

“ Because of many other urgent duties and lack of departmental support, I have not been able to devote as much of my time to nut culture as I would like, and therefore have had to make the very best use of the little time I have had at my disposal. I am looking forward to the time when those in authority will have a greater appreciation of the value of nut trees and will see their way clear to appoint someone to devote his whole time and energy toward increasing the productiveness and adding to the beauty of our country by means of more and better nut trees. ”

“ Each species adheres closely to its own food plant. The hickory-nut weevil does not attack hazel-nuts nor the hazel-nut weevil hickory-nuts. None of the acorn-infesting species will seek for food in the nuts of chestnut, hickory or hazel. Once the chestnut weevils are absent in a locality, there is no chance that oak trees will serve as a means of spreading the weevils back into the locality. So closely confined are these weevils to their particular food plants that many of them distinguish between the different species of oak and will oviposit only in certain kinds of acorns. ”

“ All of you men who are spending your time and energy in finding new facts regarding the propagation and culture of nut trees are doing pioneer work, and your names will go down in the history of nut growing in the same way as those of Wilder, Downing, and Prince have come to us linked with the early development of fruit growing in the United States. I feel confident that the work of the association will stand the test of time. ”

“ The nut is one of the best of the products of nature. It is one of the oldest of foods, and among certain animals it is almost the only food depended upon for health and growth.
If Mr. Bryan is mistaken about the origin of man, and if his antagonists are right, the natural ancestors of the human race were all nut eaters. At least the gorillas and chimpanzees are fond of the nut. When we go back to the early history of the Greeks and the early inhabitants of Great Britain, we find that they depended largely upon the acorn for food. ”

“ A common error in the minds of the American people is the assumption that to be a success, a thing must be performed upon a large scale. To develop a nut industry, it is imagined that there must be great orchards of hundreds of acres. It is not realized that a great proportion of the walnuts, almonds, filberts, and chestnuts annually imported from Europe, are from roadside, hillside and door-yard trees which could as well have been grown in this country on what is now idle land in thickly populated agricultural districts. ”

“ It will not require so long a time to carry tree crops from the seedling phase to the phase of grafted kinds with greater productivity and quality. In the past the successful tree grafter was a specially skilled man. Now almost anybody may graft almost any sort of tree at almost any time of the year.
Aside from grafting, the hybridizing of nut trees, like that of cereal grain plants, has become a scientific sport appealing to the play instinct of man. When work becomes play in any field of human activity progress goes by leaps and bounds. ”

“ Even were there no blight it would not be advisable to plant chestnut orchards where it is native because of the weevil. The weevil appears to be worse on the large improved varieties than on the smaller native. Of course any one planting a chestnut orchard now would plant the newer, larger varieties, as they will always outsell the smaller. No one who has not talked with handlers of chestnuts can have any idea of the handicap the weevil is to sales and prices. Where the chestnut is not native the nuts produced will be free of weevils. ”

“ He wanted to know what the Northern Nut Growers' Association was like, if it was something like the Tree Planting Association. The fact is that people do not understand, as yet, the meaning of this association or its purpose. They do not realize that California sends 25,000 tons of walnuts to market, worth millions of dollars, and 10,000 tons of almonds this year. They don't realize that down in Georgia, in the poor, puny pinewoods where men had a hard time to make a living at one time, they are now riding around in limousines because they are growing nuts. ”

“ They do not realize the enormous social and economic importance and consequence of work of the nut growers of today in the part that they play in the agriculture of the world for tomorrow. The newspapers would rather send some representative to see a prince fall down with his horse. But I know from mutual acquaintances that the Prince would rather be with us here today at this meeting than to be listening to a thousand and one nonentities and taking part in conversations with no future meaning. ”

“ Nut trees of most species commonly thrive at both latitudes and altitudes much greater than the limits of regular or even frequent crop production. This fact is seldom fully appreciated by prospective planters, particularly in the North, who, not unnaturally, assume that the presence of a group of vigorous appearing trees, or even of a single tree, particularly in a fruitful year, is sufficient evidence of local hardiness to justify commercial planting. However, practically all of our native species of nut-bearing trees are indigenous well beyond the range of regular crop production. ”

“ In all my intensive work on the blight between 1907 and 1913 I cannot now recall a single instance where a chestnut sprout in a disease-ridden area ever reached a diameter of an inch or thereabouts before its existence was cut short by the blight; and yet today—a dozen years later—we are finding quite a number of living sprouts over two inches in diameter, and a few that are three, four, and even up to seven inches in diameter. Last Friday, August 29, I heard of a small chestnut tree in New Jersey that bore a few burs last year and which has a dozen or more this year. ”

“ A nut is a seed, and a seed, normally, is an embryo plant asleep. To keep a nut-seed asleep and safely resting against the favorable time when it may awake, arise and go forth, as a vigorous seedling bent upon a career of earth conquest, requires no great or unusual attention and care save that which is necessary to maintain such conditions as will insure the complete maturing, ripening and curing of the seed, its protection against the ravages of rodents or other nut-eating animals, undue moisture and an unfavorably high temperature. ”

“ On the basis of our present knowledge we cannot recommend large plantations but would encourage the planting of nuts in an experimental way, especially for home use. It should be borne in mind that in the early days of fruit growing in America it was the amateur planting of varieties that laid the foundations for the present industry. If shade trees are to be planted let them be nut trees. Plant nut trees as a hobby but do not go into nut culture on a large scale for profit unless you can afford to lose. ”

“ In recommending to a lady of means that she should plant, as shade trees, northern pecans she promptly wanted to know how many bushels of nuts she would get off of the trees the next year.
Perhaps we place too much importance on selecting just the right spot and soil in which to plant a nut tree and thus cause the intending planter to be too timid in making a start. Those who know anything about trees know pretty well where it is not advisable to plant trees, especially those with a long tap-root. They can judge fairly well from the wild trees of the same variety growing round about. ”

“ Yet, on the other hand, to wait to find a kind of nut a hundred per cent hardy under all conditions, would be not to plant at all. No varieties of any species are immune to winter injury over any great portion of the United States. The planting of nut trees in the northern part of the country is certain to go forward, but for the present, east of the Rockies, large orchards of nut trees of any species or variety must be regarded as fields promising for experimentation rather than of sound commercial investment. ”

“ On the whole I presume there are fewer insects that attack nuts in this country than commonly attack apples, but apple growers are not limited in planting nor prevented from making profits on account of insect depredations. Neither should the probability of more or less insect injury discourage the would-be planter of nut trees.
The presence of an insect in any locality may mean, among other considerations, that the soil, and climatic conditions of that locality are favorable to the plant upon which the insect feeds. ”

“ DEVELOPING A NUT INDUSTRY IN THE NORTHEAST BY DR. G. A. ZIMMERMAN, PENNSYLVANIA We have all heard of the pecan. No doubt most of us have traveled through the South at some time or other and have entertained a wish for a pecan grove. A personal friend of mine, a minister, told me recently that the only time he was ever tempted to invest in a commercial proposition was when a real estate agent laid a picture of a pecan grove before him. I had entertained the thought that some day I might possess an orchard. ”

“ If a stock either from youthfulness or inherent lack of vigor is not rapid growing it is almost useless to try to graft it or transplant it until it does show the needed vigor.
As to stocks to grow in the nursery with the idea of grafting them later, the two commonly used, the bitternut for the bitternut hybrids and the pecan for others, there is little further to be recommended at this time, although for some varieties, notably the Vest, a stock better adapted to it than any we now have is earnestly to be desired. ”

“ In every case, however, the adaptability of the kind of nut to the locality should be passed upon by an expert. In every case, also, even in that of top-working native hickories and walnuts, intelligent and generous care is essential for any degree of commercial success.
It is probable also, that the planting of the European filbert can be recommended under conditions of intelligent care.
Now what of the association's future? The field is boundless but the working cash is wanting. Faith is unlimited but works are conditioned by want of appeal to commercial powers. ”