Twenty-five years ago New York was one of the leading lumber-producing states of the Union. Today some twenty other states produce more lumber than comes from the forests and woodlots of New York. Statistics given out recently by the United States Census Bureau and the Conservation Commission of New York show that, out of the land acreage of over thirty-two millions in New York, but twenty-two millions are included within farms. This leaves something over eight millions of acres outside of farms and presumably non-agricultural. The forests of the Adirondacks and Catskills and the woodlots of the rougher hill counties in the southern and southwestern part of the state come within this vast area of eight millions of acres. Without doubt with increasing population there will come some increase in the use of what are now non-agricultural lands for the practice of agriculture, but with three hundred years of agricultural history back of us in this state it does not seem likely that there will be much change in the relation of non-agricultural to agricultural land during the next half-century. Out of the twenty-two millions of acres of farm lands in the state but fifteen millions are actually under cultivation, leaving, therefore, from six to eight millions of acres within the farms of the state but lying idle. That is, we have a Massachusetts enclosed within our farms which is non-productive as far as direct returns are concerned. Yet there is really no waste land in New York, as every square foot of the state which is covered with any soil at all is capable of producing good forest trees. It is this great area of idle land enclosed within our farms which seems to have unusual promise in the development of nut culture in the state. There is a great deal of land now idle in the form of steep hillsides or ridges or rocky slopes upon which we may grow with comparative ease our walnuts, butter-nuts, hickories, hazelnuts, in the wild form at least.