and others interested in the chestnut that for the time being little is being done with it, other than to study and discuss this disease.  What the final outcome will be no one can predict, but it is not improbable that our pathologists will discover some practical means of control, or that a natural enemy to the blight will appear.  Nor is it unlikely that immune strains of chestnuts, either native or foreign, will replace our present groves and orchards, in case other efforts fail.

Another nut which has received a large degree of attention at the hands of the planters and upon which hopes have been built from time to time is the hazel, or filbert.  Here again, history seems to have failed us, for as yet the writer has been able to learn but little regarding the early introductions into this country.  In his Nut Culturist, published in 1896, Mr. Fuller (A.  S.) reasoned that at that time plants of the European hazels must have been grown in the gardens of this country for at least a hundred years.  Writers on pomology make little reference to this nut, but according to Mr. Fuller, nurserymen’s catalogs listed hazel varieties all through the early part of the last century.  It was believed that the hazel promised much for the gardener and the general planter who wished for early returns.  The species seemed capable of readily adapting itself to cultivation, and being a shrub rather than a tree, it required little space.  It could be cultivated along with other garden products at little additional expense for labor.  Being an early bearer it doubtless appealed strongly to the normal American demand for quick returns.

Nevertheless, this nut met with its mortal foe in the way of a native fungus which in a great many sections has proved entirely too much for the European species.  Where once this species was well represented up and down the Atlantic Coast, few of its representatives are now to be found.

Some early attention in these Eastern States has been paid to the almond, another foreign species.  It is supposed that this nut is a native of the Mediterranean basin.  Just when it was first tried on the Atlantic Coast is not known, but of the nuts thus far mentioned it has proved to be the least promising for the Eastern section.  Sometimes said to be “as hardy as the peach,” it has been found to be the most exacting in its requirements of soil and climate of any important nut now grown in this country.  Except with certain of the hardshell varieties, no almonds are now known to be in any sense successful east of the Rocky Mountains.  According to Wickson (E.  J.) in his California Fruits, the almond is known to have been introduced into California previous to 1853.  At that time efforts to build up an almond industry on the Pacific Coast began to assume a somewhat serious air.  After a half century of trials and more or less persistent effort by the California planters the culture of this nut has developed into the third most important nut industry in the United States.  As for the time being, the growing of Persian walnuts centered in southern California, so did the growing of almonds in the Sacramento Valley of northern California.