very easy to transplant. I have since then raised numerous seedlings from imported seed, by sowing them both in pots and in the open ground. If allowed to become dry they sometimes lie over a year, and should therefore be sown as soon as ripe. The young trees are distinguishable from those of J. nigra by having fewer pairs of leaflets, but they grow quite as fast, and are quite as hardy as the latter. Both nigra and cinerea, though liable to injury from late spring frosts, are much hardier as regards winter frost when old enough to ripen their wood, but as, like other walnuts, they do not bear pruning well, they require careful attention when young in order to become shapely trees. Sir Charles Strickland has raised from seed plants at Boynton in Yorkshire which grew to five or six feet high, but all ultimately died.
Mr. J.H. Bonny, Ratcliffe Cottage, Forton, Garstang, sent specimens to Kew in 1900 from a tree 60 years old, which fruited for the first time in that year. It had only attained 22 feet high by 2½ feet in girth at 5 feet from the ground. There is a tree at Bayfordbury which produced a few nuts in 1905. It is 35 feet high by 3 feet 2 inches in girth, and is as large as a black walnut planted beside it. At Tredethy in Cornwall, the seat of F.T. Hext, Esq., I am told by Mr. Bartlett, that there was in 1905 a tree 35 feet by 2 feet 2 inches.
At Riccarton near Edinburgh, the seat of Sir James Gibson Craig, Bart., there is a butternut growing in a sheltered spot which Henry measured in 1905, and though its position makes it difficult to measure accurately, he believes it to be about 50 feet by 3 feet 3 inches.
In Ireland Henry measured in 1904 at Kilmacurragh, Co. Wicklow, a tree 32 feet high by 3 feet 4 inches; while at Charleville in the same county, the seat of Lord Monck, a tree, planted probably in 1869, was 25 feet high by 2 feet in girth.
Timber
The timber of this tree, though it resembles that of other walnuts in texture and grain, is much inferior in colour to that of the black walnut, but Hough" says that though not so high-priced it is nevertheless of great value for interior finish and wain- scoting. In Prof. Sargent’s house at Brookline, near Boston, I saw a very handsome mantelpiece and some panelling made from it, and it is occasionally used for furniture. It is pale brown in colour, with whitish-grey sapwood, and the burrs are sometimes cut into handsome veneers. Mr. John Booth® states that he cut down some exotic trees planted by his father at the celebrated Flottbeck nurseries near Hamburg when about 50 years old; and from the wood of a butternut wainscoted a room ; “the polish was even finer than that of J. nigra, with a splendid glossy hue.”
Emerson says, loc. cit. 209, that from the bark a mild purgative is made, and thai the Shakers at Lebanon obtain a rich purple dye from it. The common dye used by the early settlers for their homespun cloth was from the husk of the
1 American Woods, p. 61.
2 Gard. Chron. xxx. 407 (1901).
