ssociation bring to the prospective nut grower which will be of
help? For, after all, the success or failure of this association depends
largely upon its ability to help the grower or prospective grower.
Before we undertake to give suggestions about the development and
culture of nut orchards or to make prophecies as to possibilities, let
us stop and take stock for a moment of the present status of the nut
industry in the North and consider what we have to build upon and what
materials we have with which to work. Mistakes have been made in the
past by the prospective nut growers because they did not stop to
consider the possibilities of the nuts that were native in their own
locality, but looked abroad for something else. This is characteristic
of many people. "Distant fields look green," and, of all the imported
nut trees, none except the English walnut have been of any success here
whatever, while, in one instance at least, their importation has
resulted in introducing into this country the fatal chestnut blight,
which probably came in on uninspected stock from Japan. We have better
native chestnuts in this country than any foreign chestnut and the
blunder of trying to get something different is costing the country
millions of dollars through the scourge of the chestnut blight, which
threatens to wipe out the industry. It reminds me of the epitaph on the
tombstone which read: "I was well and wanted to be better, took medicine
and here I am." Therefore, let us consider what nuts we have worth
while.

_The Pecan_

First, we have the northern pecan which is native in certain portions of
a belt approximately 150 miles wide, with Evansville, Indiana, on the
38th parallel, as the center. I do not mean to say that the pecan will
succeed in all portions of the northern half of this belt or that it may
not succeed in many sections farther north. The question of climate, as
modified by proximity to oceans and large bodies of water or as made
more rigid by absence of these protections, may decrease or increase the
latitude at which the pecan can be successfully grown. The orange, for
instance, is one of the tenderest fruits and yet, on the western coast,
orange groves are flourishing at the same latitude as Philadelphia,
which is nearly on the 40th parallel, although it is unnecessary to say
that an orange grove would not survive within four or five hundred miles
of the 40th parallel any place else except on the favored weste