THE EASTERN BLACK WALNUT 183
tional employment. It is like the cottage loom of Revolutionary days.
Persons who have never gathered walnuts fail to appreciate the great productivity of these trees in localities where they grow abundantly. The Madison Survey, a paper published by a vegetarian disciple of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who runs a school for mountain boys and girls not far from Nashville, reports that the school went to the autumn woods with a picnic dinner one day in October, 1920, and brought back in trucks and wagons over two hundred bushels of black walnuts in the hull.'
THE BLACK WALNUT ORCHARD
All of the above-mentioned commercial facts have depended upon wild nuts—the chance product of nature. Few of the readers of this book have seen any black walnut except the wild one. An industry is now starting on the basis of commercial propagation of a few varieties of black walnuts—the best wild trees that have been found. The parent trees of these varieties have been selected from millions of wild trees. The search for varieties was made by the Northern Nut Growers' Association * working in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and a few members of state staffs.
This new industry depends upon four facts:
(1) The technique of budding and grafting nut trees which has been recently developed in America. By skillful use of the new technique we may multiply any tree that we may choose and make of it a variety with an indefinite number of specimens.
(2) Several parent trees of superior merit are now available for propagation.
(3) An increasing demand for black walnut kernels.
(4) The new industry has possibilities of heavy production
- The Madison Survey. October 27, 1920.
5 This association is a very interesting group of pioneers with a membership of diverse and often distinguished attainments. (H. D. Spencer. Secretary. Decatur, Illinois.)
