Nurserymen were not slow to recognize the value of the pecan tree for planting purposes, and nursery grown stock has been on the market many years. Extensive orchards have been planted in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and other southern states, and some of the earliest of these orchards are now in bearing. However, by far the largest part of pecans on the market is wild fruit from the forests. Many are shipped in from Mexico, but most grow in the rich woods of southern states. They are gathered like chestnuts in northern woods. The people who pick them sell to local stores at low prices, often taking pay in merchandise. Buyers collect the stock from country and village merchants, and put it on the general market, often at three or four times the price paid to the gatherers of the nuts. One of the most important matters connected with pecan is the large number of horticultural varieties which have been produced by cultivation and selection. More than seventy have been listed in nursery catalogues and special reports. Some of the nuts are twice the size of those of the forest, and shells have been reduced in thinness until some of them are really thinner than they should be to stand the rough usage which comes to them in reaching markets. Dealers occasionally polish pecans to impart the rich, brown color which is supposed to give them the appearance of being fresh and of high grade. The polishing is produced by friction, when the nuts in bulk are shaken violently. Last year’s stock takes on as bright a polish as fresh stock, and the color and smoothness alone are not sufficient to prove that pecans are fresh from the trees. The planted pecan tree grows rapidly and is as easily raised as fruit trees. The wild tree is long-lived, and the cultivated varieties will probably be like it.