National Museum.

In his opening address the president spoke of the need for increased
membership and improved financial condition. He also recommended a
return to the old method of combining the secretary and treasurer in one
office and that the secretary-treasurer should have a fair salary,
suitable quarters, and adequate help. He spoke of his own efforts to
increase the usefulness of the association and expressed his fears that
they had amounted to very little. He quoted the statement of the editor
of the American Nut Journal that what people want to know is whether
they can make any money by the cultivation of nut trees. That statement
led to a campaign to try to locate in the territory of the association
groups of nut trees in profitable bearing. He felt satisfied that there
are numerous paying nut orchards, and he recommended a continuance of
the campaign for locating such orchards.

The president then went on to instance the experience of Mr. Frederick
G. Brown of Salisbury, Mass., at whose place, about two miles from the
ocean, there are two Persian walnut trees, 12 to 15 years old, one of
them about a foot in diameter and twenty feet high, that have borne for
two years. Peach trees will not live at this place. Two miles away at
Newburyport is a tree a year or two younger that bore a half peck of
nuts last year, and another tree 35 years old in bearing for 15 or 20
years. The nuts were spoken of as of high quality.

He referred to Edward Selkirk of North East, Pa., who has a grove of 250
trees about 22 years old of the Pomeroy variety. Last year the crop was
one ton and brought in a little over $500.00. This year the crop is much
larger. For best development of the trees the land should be given over
entirely to their culture.

The president quoted a letter from E. A. Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois as
follows:

My nut plantings are mostly young, many just coming into bearing, while
many others have been top-worked to better varieties, so that money
returns are not what they would be had I started out planting improved
varieties. Part of my aim was to originate better varieties than we had
when I began. In this, I think, I have been fairly successful.

My plantings consist mostly of chestnuts. These have sold readily at 35
to 40 cents per pound wholesale. It is rather a hard matter to give any
idea as to profit, except that we gathered 23 pounds from one tree five
years after topworking on a tree then about thr