o or three or four feet per
year when well fed, and keeping it up an indefinite time, the question
of ultimate size is one to be reckoned with. That the pecan tree can
attain great size in the North, as well as in the South, is attested by
the record of a tree in northern Maryland on Spesutia Island, near the
head of Chesapeake Bay. The tree is described by one of our members, Mr.
Wilmer P. Hoopes, as being eighty-four years old, hale and hearty.

"This tree is 106 feet tall, with a spread of 110 feet, has two limbs,
respectively 57 and 60 feet long and is 13 feet in circumference, 3 feet
above ground, and is an annual bearer of thin shell, nuts that, though
rather small now, are mighty good to eat."

If nut trees are going to grow into that size, we must plant very wide
or make up our minds to a very heroic and very difficult act, one which
many men in the South should do this minute, namely, cut down half or
three-quarters of the nut trees on a given acre.

I wish to emphasize the health aspect from the standpoint of the tree of
this very wide planting. It is generally recognized by horticultural
authority that trees develop sickness and disease when crowded in large
numbers. The pecan trees 100 feet apart may perhaps escape this danger
and have the sun on all parts of their leaf surface, a fact, by the way,
which is necessary to crop production on this and other nut trees.

This wide planting is practically the method followed in most of the
important French Persian walnut districts. With very few exceptions
their trees are isolated, a man having two or twenty, or thirty,
scattered about his farm, usually in the midst of his fields where they
can develop to perfection, take the tillage of the crops, and bring in
some extra money, which one of the owners very significantly told me is
"income without effort." This income without effort aspect of the matter
takes the form of a man having to pay as much rent for a good walnut
tree in the department of Dordogne, as he does for an acre of good wheat
land alongside.

_Rough Land Tree Crops Insurance._

What kind of tree crops insurance might I have had for my chestnuts
grafted nineteen years ago? Had I known then as much as I now know about
nut trees, excepting the chestnut blight, I should have planted that
place thickly with black walnut nuts and northern pecan nuts, unless the
squirrels were too quick for me, in which case I should have used little
seedlings. The