tree and
their hulls peeled off with almost no effort. Whether these features
continue after the trees become older is something I shall observe with
interest.

[Illustration: _Self hulling Butternut. Weschcke variety. Drawing by Wm.
Kuehn._]

The nearly self-hulling quality of these nuts makes them very clean to
handle. The absence of hulls in cracking butternuts not only does away
with the messiness usually involved, but also it allows more accurate
cracking and more sanitary handling of the kernels. In 1949 I noticed a
new type of butternut growing near the farm residence. This butternut
was fully twice as large as the Weschcke and had eight prominent ridges.
The nut proved to be even better than the older variety and we intend to
test it further by grafting it on butternuts and black walnut stocks.
Although hand-operated nutcrackers have been devised to crack these and
other wild nuts, they are not as fast as a hammer. If one protects the
hand by wearing a glove and stands the butternut on a solid iron base,
hitting the pointed end with a hammer, it is quite possible to
accumulate a pint of clean nut meats in half an hour.

The butternut tree is one whose lumber may be put to many uses. It is
light but very tough and stringy and when planed and sanded, it absorbs
varnish and finishes very well. Although not as dark in natural color as
black walnut, butternut resembles it in grain. When butternut has been
stained to represent black walnut, it is only by their weight that they
can be distinguished. In late years, natural butternut has become
popular as an interior finish and for furniture, being sold as "blonde
walnut," "French walnut," or "white walnut," in my opinion very improper
names. I see no reason for calling it by other than its own. Depletion
of forests of butternut trees brings its lumber value up in price nearly
to that of fine maple or birch, approaching that of black walnut in some
places.

I have run several thousand feet of butternut lumber from my farmland
through my own sawmill and used it for a variety of purposes. It is
probably the strongest wood for its weight except spruce. I have used it
successfully to make propellers which operate electric generators for
deriving power from the wind. Because butternut is so light and,
properly varnished, resists weathering and decay to so great an extent,
I have found it the best material I have ever tried for such
construction. In building a small elec