next year, he said, he expected to have 25 varieties of black walnuts in
his collection including some hybrids. Machines for cracking black
walnuts by power are now practically perfect and one firm in that
business has cracked about a million pounds in the last few years and
expects to treble or quadruple its business this season if supplies can
be secured. The trouble with most walnut cracking machines is that they
crush instead of crack and small bits of shell are apt to stick to the
meats. But there is machinery now to remove these bits of shell. There
are wild black walnuts that run 16 to 18 per cent kernels, though the
average is only 12-1/2%. It is not always the largest nuts that produce
the greatest proportionate weight of kernels. The picking and cracking
expense with black walnuts is very little greater than with pecans, but
the final cleaning to render the meat absolutely free of shells has been
very expensive. Cultivated black walnuts will of course give better
results, because they have been selected for easy cracking, have kernels
that separate readily from the shell, the product is uniform, and the
nuts require much less grading before cracking than the wild black
walnuts, where every tree bears nuts differing in size, as in almost
every other quality. Figuring 50,000 pounds to the carload it will take
about eight carloads of wild black walnuts to make one carload of
kernels of the same weight. More and more English walnuts and pecans are
being sold in the form of kernels, and black walnuts also will best be
sold in kernels. These can be canned in vacuum glass or metal cans, and
the housewife will use more nuts when she can get the shell-free meats
with her favorite cooking utensil, the can-opener. Confectioners and
bakers will take black walnut meats by the carload in preference to
other nut meats because they have more flavor, and so "go further."

The growing of black walnuts in a commercial way will require education,
but already there is a growing interest. Several of the large weekly
publications have, within the last couple of months, carried full page,
illustrated articles on black walnuts. One of these, in a magazine of
general circulation which is over half a million, within a month
resulted in almost one hundred letters asking for additional
information, which shows that a great many people want to know more
about the possibilities of black walnuts. This interest will certainly
increase when p