=Native of the United States= (_Juglans cinerea._ Linn.). Butternut. White Walnut.--Leaflets fifteen to nineteen, oblong-lanceolate and sharp-pointed, rounded at the base, downy, especially on the underside, petioles covered with viscid hairs; fruit oblong, two or more inches in length, with a clammy husk, not opening when ripe, but closely adhering to the deeply corrugated and rough, thick shell. Trees with wide-spreading branches, and of medium hight, or from forty to fifty feet, but in deep forests sometimes sixty to seventy, with stems two to three feet in diameter. A common tree in moist soils almost everywhere, from the Canadas southward to the highlands of northern Georgia, Alabama, and sparingly in Mississippi and Arkansas, and all the States bordering the Mississippi river northward to Minnesota. A valuable timber tree, with soft, light wood, much used of late for furniture and inside house finishing. In early times the inner bark was employed for making a yellow dye, also as a medicine, the extract being a mild cathartic, hence one of the specific names, _Cathartica_. Synonyms. _Juglans oblonga alba_, Marshall. _Juglans cathartica_, Michaux. _Carya cathartica_, Barton, 1818. _Wallia cinerea_, Alefeld, 1861. =Varieties of the Butternut.=--There are to be found many varieties of the butternut, varying mainly in the size of the nuts, and only slightly in the thickness of the shell; but I am not aware that any of these have ever been propagated, all the trees in cultivation or elsewhere having been grown from the nuts. This nut is, no doubt, susceptible of great improvement, as well as others of the genus, and it is worthy of being experimented with for that purpose, especially in cold, northern climates, where there are few or no other kinds of edible nuts. Probably the most direct and surest way to secure improved varieties is by hybridizing, taking the butternut for the female parent, and the Persian walnut for the male. Hybrids between these two species are already known, and they will, no doubt, become more plentiful as soon as skillful horticulturists are encouraged to produce them. Several hybrid walnuts of other species are figured and described by European horticulturists, but, so far as known, they are mainly accidental productions, and not the result of any direct effort of man; nature, in this instance, merely giving a hint of the possible, leaving us to avail ourselves of the lesson if we feel so inclined.