Butternut in the forest may attain a height of eighty or 100 feet, and a diameter of three, but few persons ever see a specimen of that size, and never in open ground. In shade, the butternut does its best to get its crown up to light and sunshine, but it is weak. It often gives up the struggle and remains in the shade of trees which overtop it. In that situation its crown is small, thin, and appears to rest lightly in the form of a small bunch of yellowish-green leaves on the top of a tall, spindling bole, which is seldom straight, but is made up of slight, undulating curves. The pale, yellowish tinge of the bark suggests a plant deprived of sunshine. When butternut grows in open ground where light falls upon its crown and on all sides, it assumes a different form and presents another figure. The trunk is nearly as short as that of an apple tree. It divides in large branches and limbs, and these spread wide; leaves are healthy, yet the crown of a butternut always looks thin compared with that of the black walnut. Tests show that butternut wood, when thoroughly dry, is somewhat stiffer than black walnut; but it is light and weak. It is about two-thirds as heavy and two-thirds as strong as black walnut. The growing tree betrays the wood’s weakness. Large limbs snap in storms. Trees become lopsided, and a symmetrical, well-proportioned butternut crown is an exception. The broken branches leave openings for the entrance of decay, and butternuts nearly always die of disease rather than of old age. Leaves are compound, and from fifteen to thirty inches in length. Few trees of this country have larger leaves. There are from eleven to seventeen leaflets. They are hairy and sticky. Hands that handle them are covered with mucilage-like substance. The nuts, which grow in clusters of three or five, are of the same color as the leaves and covered with the same sticky fuzz. The nuts are two inches or more in length, and are borne abundantly when trees stand in open ground. Size rather than age appears to determine the period when trees commence to bear. Those of extra vigor produce when ten or twelve years old. The nuts are salable in the market. They fall with the leaves, immediately after the first sharp frost, and all come down together. A single day frequently suffices to strip the last leaf from a tree, though some of the nuts may hang a little longer. The kernels are very rich, when the nuts are dry, and are apt to cloy the appetite; but they are improved by freezing where they lie on the ground among the leaves; but they must be used quickly after they thaw, or they will spoil. Nuts nearly full-grown but not yet hard are made into pickles, but the fuzz must first be washed off with hot water.