What a pity that some such custom could not have prevailed during the past century in the United States. The author from whom I have just quoted adds that the Bergstrasse, which extends from Heidelberg to Darmstadt, is all planted with walnuts. Cold winters, however, have occasionally played havoc with the walnut trees in Europe, and one of these occurred in 1709, when the greater part of the trees were seriously injured, especially in Switzerland, Germany and France. Many trees were cut down for their timber, which is always in great demand for gun-stocks and furniture. Certain Dutch capitalists, foreseeing the scarcity of walnut timber, bought up all they could procure, and years afterwards sold it at a greatly advanced price. In the year 1720 an act was passed in France to prevent the exportation of walnut timber, and this led to the planting of these trees more extensively than at any previous date; this practice has continued to the present time, hence the immense revenue secured from the exportation of these nuts. The people of the United States are good customers for the surplus stock of Europe, and will probably so continue, until we wake up to a sense of our folly of perpetually buying articles that could be readily produced at home, and at a very large profit. =Persian Walnut in America.=--The date of the first experiment in planting this nut in this country is now probably unknown, but the oldest tree that I have been able to find with anything like a satisfactory history, is still growing vigorously at Washington Heights, on Manhattan Island, near 160th street and St. Nicholas avenue. I gave a brief history of this noble monarch of its race in the _American Garden_ for September, 1888, from which the following account is condensed: "In 1758 Roger Morris, an English gentleman, built a spacious mansion on his estate, at what, in later years, became known as Washington Heights. His grounds were well laid out for that time, and many rare foreign trees and shrubs planted, among them several, as then called, English walnuts. Whether these trees were raised from the nuts, or plants of some size imported, is not now known. Mr. Morris may have procured the seedlings from the Prince Nursery, Flushing, L. I., for this famous garden was established in 1713, or forty-five years previous to the building of the Morris mansion and the planting of the grounds about it.