Alfalfa that they can feed to their dairy cattle, and tree crops that they can use their labor on in the winter time. Nine men are leaving the farm today for every one going there. If you don't believe it, read the census statistics. The reason is labor and because you can't afford to pay it. I don't think there is any profit in selling the black walnut as a nut, but there will be profit in gathering that nut, storing it, and, when your farm crops are all in and you are ready to discharge the labor, put up an ordinary cheap cracking shed and let them crack the nuts for you, and sell the meats. That solves the question of what to do with farm labor in the winter time. The walnuts return about ten pounds of meat to a bushel, and a good cracker ought to crack from four to six bushels of nuts a day. Suppose you get only twenty-five cents a pound for the meats and your men crack only three bushels a day, each there is $7.50 a day coming in from each cracker, and, besides, you have made a valuable employment for your labor through the winter, and you can afford to pay them for their work. That is why I say the black walnut is, to my mind, one of the best commercial propositions.

I don't know how soon you can bring a black walnut orchard into bearing. Here is a picture of a tree probably seven or eight years old, loaded with nuts. That is a seedling tree. I should think a budded tree would bear sooner than that.

I don't know much about walnut varieties. The Rush and Thomas are excellent nuts. But this Stabler walnut, in my opinion, is in a class by itself in cracking possibilities. It is simply a cracking proposition with the black walnut, and that is, to my mind, about all there is to it. Perhaps, other good varieties will be discovered. Then, suppose we find, after a while, an English walnut much better and more profitable than we have at present, and one that is blight resistant. If you have an orchard of black walnuts you have an ideal stock to top-work to English. I will show you one on my farm with a larger top than I cut off grown in two summers, and it set some nuts last spring. So, if you want a foundation for an English walnut orchard, you can't make any mistake in planting the budded or grafted varieties of these black walnuts.

The black walnut is a beautiful roadside tree. There are different types, the same as with the pecan tree. Here is a picture of curly black walnut wood. The logs were cut from a tree in Kentucky. It took three wagons to haul this one tree to market, and it brought thirty-five hundred dollars.

THE PRESIDENT: I wish to present Mr. Stabler as the original propagator of the tree that bears his name. The nuts of the Stabler black walnut have been pronounced by a good many authorities as the best variety thus far discovered.

MR. HENRY STABLER: Dr. Smith has just introduced me as the discoverer of this walnut. This is hardly fair to Mr. Littlepage, who first introduced and, probably, first propagated this walnut. It was discovered by my grandfather a little over forty years ago. Nothing was done with it at that time for the reason that nothing could be done, but I was not the first one to get the idea of propagating it, because my father, who is here today, attempted to graft these walnuts, and every cion failed.

It seems to me that Mr. Littlepage strikes the key-note in his article in The Country Gentleman last spring when he says that:

"Through the efforts of the Northern Nut Growers' Association there was recently discovered a black walnut tree in Howard County, Maryland, producing nuts that crack out seventy-five to eighty per cent of whole halves. The meat of this variety, the Stabler, weighs forty-seven per cent of the whole nut."

That's it, gentlemen. I did not discover this walnut, and without the organization of the Northern Nut Growers' Association I could not have done any more with it than my grandfather was able to do forty years ago, but, as it was, we just took up several samples and the Northern Nut Growers did the rest. The walnut has been attracting more and more attention ever since.

Considering the black walnut as timber, here is a picture of a black walnut log, published in Farmers' Bulletin No. 715, of the Department of Agriculture. The original owner, a farmer, sold the whole tree, standing, for fifty dollars; the buyer felled it at a cost of fifteen dollars, and sold it there for $138.26. It was resold, without being removed, for $164.84, and later sold (the last price is not published) to a large sewing machine factory, but it certainly brought more than that last price which is printed, of $164.84. We occasionally hear of prices of $100 or so being paid for black walnut trees on the stump. The reason we don't hear of such prices being paid more frequently is because the farmer in not more than one case out of twenty gets real value for his black walnut trees. There is a very highly organized and efficient system in the United States of gathering up the black walnut trees which are large enough to use for furniture and other purposes and paying for them as little as possible; but they make a practice of getting them even if they do have to pay more. There was a man living not so far from where I live, up in our country, who had a very fine black walnut tree standing in his yard. One day a man came around and entered into conversation with him, and said, "Mr. Harder, what will you take for that tree in your yard?" "It isn't for sale," said Mr. Harder. "Well," said the man, "I'll give you a hundred dollars for it." Mr. Harder merely shook his head. The buyer dickered along a little bit more and after a while said, "I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll give you $150 for that tree." Mr. Harder said "If you don't get off this place, sir, immediately, I'll shoot you."

I am prepared to say that if you are going to plant trees for timber there is no other tree which will give such a yield as the black walnut, with the exception of the catalpa, and, perhaps, the black locust. It is the most valuable tree we have, and it is the most valuable wood grown in the North. I don't believe, either, the black walnut will ever be less valuable than it is. I know positively that the Stabler tree is not over sixty-five years old, perhaps, not over sixty, and yet that tree, judging from the prices I have seen paid for other trees of similar size, is worth from $125 to $150 on the stump. From the time that tree started until now, it has increased in value at the rate of two dollars a year, for timber alone, to say nothing of the nut. Suppose the tree had been purchased sixty years ago at two dollars from the nurseryman. It would have paid one hundred per cent annually on the investment. It bears, as a regular thing, a crop every other year.

As to what Mr. Pomeroy said about the black walnut not cracking well and crumbling up when it gets to be old, I have some specimens here of the Stabler walnut I cracked this morning, which are of the 1915 crop.

The kernel of these old nuts keeps its flavor and sweetness wonderfully. There is hardly any change in quality within one year, whereas some other nuts, as the hazel and some varieties of the pecan, become rancid after keeping six months.

DR. MORRIS: I would like to say one word about the curly walnut. In Maine, not long ago, I saw a young man who had bought a bird's eye maple, perhaps fifty years of age, that he paid $1,500 for. I asked him why he didn't graft one million ordinary maples from that tree and sell the stock at $200 per tree, and then he would have $200,000,000 at just about the time of life when he could enjoy it. Well, that hadn't occurred to him. Now, if Mr. Littlepage will hunt up this curly black walnut stump that sold for $3,500, and if he will graft a million trees from that he will be able to raise a family of ten children (Laughter.)

DR. STABLER: Mr.