kind of adequate size and character, and free or nearly so, from
the ravages of disease or insect pest, would be glad to praise the
stately, hard maple, with its clear, sweet sap, producing the syrup and
sugar that are the delight of childhood and age, and would be glad to
recommend the useful basswood with its valuable lumber and its fragrant
yellow flowers, producing that nectar from which our most delicious
honey is made, and would be glad to recommend for our highways, certain
other majestic trees needed by man and beautiful in the landscape.

But the object of this association and convention is a specialized one,
as undoubtedly it should be, owing to the important field it covers, and
therefore the nut trees and it alone for planting on highways and in
public places should be the subject of this paper.

If we were to confine ourselves to one native variety or species for our
Northern territory, the great majority of people would unhesitatingly
say, let it be the Black Walnut (_Juglans nigra_). Attaining as it does
a height of 100 feet and more, and a trunk of four feet and over in
diameter, with a symmetrical top of splendid foliage, bearing the
richest of nuts and its timber the most valuable in the country, with a
natural range extending from Michigan to Mississippi and from Delaware
to the Dakotas, it should be universally planted throughout the United
States along thousands of miles of our great trunk line roads.

Its nearest American relative, the butternut (_Juglans cinerea_)
preferring lower lands along river bottoms, attaining an average height
of 60 feet with a trunk of 3 feet, its wood suitable for cabinet work,
its bark with medicinal properties, and its nuts of splendid flavor,
should be planted where soil conditions call for it.

For their rich, delicious nuts, alone, saying nothing about their clean,
handsome foliage, their rough, strong wood--the best of any grown for
many purposes--the hickories, among which are the Shagbark (_Carya
ovata_) and the big shellbark (_Carya laciniosa_), should be planted in
many places. They both frequently attain 100 feet in height with
straight sturdy trunks averaging from three to four feet in diameter.

The other nut trees suitable for roadside planting, are not specially
attractive to mankind for their fruits, as heretofore used or utilized,
but may eventually become so under modern methods of cooking or proper
treatment. In their raw state, however, all are edi