acing between rows was
planned to provide more sunlight for nut production during the early
years. No one ever planted a forest in that way, so far as I know. The
trees are now 17 years old, about 3250 of them in all. In the best soil
of this 20 acres I can count about 1000 forest-type, straight,
well-grown trees. There are about 1500 lesser trees, low-limbed trees
which will eventually be used, perhaps, for posts or some such purpose.
There are, I regret to say, about 750 trees that will never be worth
anything. An eroded slope and a hidden clay bed explain these
misbegotten dwarfs.

The variable growth of these trees proves that the first care in making
a planting of walnut for timber should be to plant in good soil, deep
and well drained. Bottom land, even some that is occasionally
overflown with flood-water, and therefore not the best wheat land,
should be excellent for Eastern Black walnuts if the drainage is good.
Rule two:--Select your seed or seedlings from large, straight-growing,
healthy parents. This rule needs explanation.

In last October's NUTSHELL, an organ of the Northern Nut Growers'
Association, Spencer Chase, its editor, called attention to a showing of
Carpathian Persian walnuts by Mr. H. F. Stoke which illustrated what was
called "the variability of seedling trees." The progenitor
of these seedlings was a Lancaster Carpathian Persian walnut tree.
Differences in size, appearance and quality of nuts from these seedlings
were said to have been remarkable. Such differences, we know, are
greater with some species than with others. A variable ancestry often
results in a variable progeny. On the other hand, I know that my Eastern
American black walnuts do tend to reproduce the characteristics of their
parents. I have long rows of seedling trees, all from one parent tree,
standing alongside long rows of seedlings from another parent. The
similarity of the tree growth and nut production of the trees in their
own rows, and their contrast in growth of trees and nuts to those in
adjoining rows is striking and to me conclusive. A photograph taken by
Dr. O. D. Diller, of Ohio State University, in 1946, shows trees in a
right-hand row grown from seed of a tree on the Kinsey farm, while on
the left are seedlings of a tree on the McCoy farm. The circumference of
trunks of Kinsey seedlings averages more than twice that of McCoy trees.
Same soil, same age (11 years), same treatment.

Those same trees, now 17 years