, others with certain features in
connection with orchard and nursery management, and still others with
walnut relationships both inside and outside of the genus.

The Black Walnut Kernel Industry

Production of black walnut kernels in this country is fully 99 per cent
from seedling trees of the fields, forests, roadsides and dooryards.
That from orchard and top-worked trees, while now considerably on the
increase, due to recent activity in planting and top-working, will
hardly become of relative importance for some years to come. The wild
crop is actually on the increase each year, due partly to greater care
now taken of old bearing trees and partly to the large number of young
trees coming into bearing each year but more largely to the greater
extent to which nuts are now being gathered and not allowed to decay on
the ground.

This increase in production is working both for and against the
permanent welfare of the industry, and by this use of the term
"industry", it is meant to include the cultivated as well as the
uncultivated phases. Consumption has increased tremendously. No figures
are available as to either total production or percentage of total crop
which is still allowed each year to remain on the ground until it
becomes decomposed.

However, it is the opinion of Baltimore merchants who have long handled
this product that in certain large districts the wild nuts are now
gathered closely and that very few are allowed to decay on the ground.
There is no available information upon which to base a curve as to the
probable increase in production which may be expected from young trees
just beginning to bear or the thousands still too young to bear or yet
the other thousands to be planted by squirrels each year. Whether or not
the increase in consumption and its coincident change in eating habits
of the American people will prove permanent after the return of normal
times, remains to be seen, but it may be accepted as fact that the
future of this country is likely to see greater competition in the home
markets among foods than has been the case in the past and that,
eventually, only those having the greatest values in nutrition and
palatability will survive. Salesmanship may defeat this for a while but
ultimately, palatability assumed, cash values and human tastes will most
certainly arrive at pretty much the same point. The ultimate future of
the walnut would therefore appear to depend largely upon its ability