Mr. Bixby (acting as secretary) then read a paper by H. R. Mosnat of Morgan Park, Illinois in which he spoke of the number of doctors interested in nut growing and the need of all men of that character having a hobby of that kind. He thought that the taxes on many farms might be paid out of the profits of nut trees planted on the farms and along the highways. But these nut trees should not be seedling trees. The apple and the black walnut are said to be the only trees that grow in every state of the Union. Nuts were one of the staple foods of our ancestors. We should not be discouraged if we have not yet found the right nut for the East and the Middle West. We should seek them promptly because of the rate at which nut trees are being converted into logs. By next year, he said, he expected to have 25 varieties of black walnuts in his collection including some hybrids. Machines for cracking black walnuts by power are now practically perfect and one firm in that business has cracked about a million pounds in the last few years and expects to treble or quadruple its business this season if supplies can be secured. The trouble with most walnut cracking machines is that they crush instead of crack and small bits of shell are apt to stick to the meats. But there is machinery now to remove these bits of shell. There are wild black walnuts that run 16 to 18 per cent kernels, though the average is only 12-1/2%. It is not always the largest nuts that produce the greatest proportionate weight of kernels. The picking and cracking expense with black walnuts is very little greater than with pecans, but the final cleaning to render the meat absolutely free of shells has been very expensive. Cultivated black walnuts will of course give better results, because they have been selected for easy cracking, have kernels that separate readily from the shell, the product is uniform, and the nuts require much less grading before cracking than the wild black walnuts, where every tree bears nuts differing in size, as in almost every other quality. Figuring 50,000 pounds to the carload it will take about eight carloads of wild black walnuts to make one carload of kernels of the same weight. More and more English walnuts and pecans are being sold in the form of kernels, and black walnuts also will best be sold in kernels. These can be canned in vacuum glass or metal cans, and the housewife will use more nuts when she can get the shell-free meats with her favorite cooking utensil, the can-opener. Confectioners and bakers will take black walnut meats by the carload in preference to other nut meats because they have more flavor, and so "go further."