and good. Then, too, it is not necessary to
climb the tree to gather the nuts for the tree being small the nuts can
almost be gathered from the ground. For planting over rocky banks and
hillsides nothing is more handsome. The dark green foliage dotted here
and there with the bright green burrs always attracts favorable
attention and comment.

Our butternut, too, cannot be omitted, for there are few better flavored
nuts than the butternut. Though hard to crack, this fault, if it may be
a fault, will soon be overcome, for we will find a tree with
thin-shelled nuts somewhere. They are no doubt present and when we do
find such a tree we may all propagate from it. Though the tree is a
rather irregular grower and is susceptible to certain bark diseases yet
it has its place in the home planting for its compound leaves and light
bark always shows prominently in the landscape. This tree sometimes
grows to an immense size. At my early home in Massachusetts one huge
butternut stood in the yard. Though the tree died long before I became
especially interested in old trees I remember that we counted the
annular rings and as near as I can recall the figures for its
measurements and rings were 13 ft. in circumference and 80 annular
rings. The trunk was perfectly solid and showed no signs of decay. Many
bushels of nuts were gathered from this one tree yearly and I can
remember the long winter evenings when we sat in the kitchen cracking
the nuts from this old tree. Some have said the butternut is
unsatisfactory as an ornamental tree but let me add--do not neglect it
in the planting plan for it will give you much pleasure, and, too, the
meats are well worth the trouble in cracking the nuts even though a
bruised finger may result.

To the family of the walnut we are indebted to Japan for the beautiful
and tropical foliage of the Japanese walnut, _Sieboldiana_. Although the
tree has many characteristics of the butternut the foliage is much more
luxuriant and it is an admirable tree for planting in the open lawn.
The individual fruit of the _Sieboldiana_ walnut is similar in
appearance to that of the butternut and is borne in clusters or racemes,
sometimes as many as twenty or more in a cluster, and is equal in every
way to that of the butternut but the nuts being smaller contain a much
less quantity of meat.

The king of the walnuts, _Juglans regia_, sometimes called Madeira
walnut, Persian walnut, Spanish walnut and English walnut, is