Aside from the beauty of most pines and the majesty of some of them, their utility is not confined to nuts alone. Timber and sap products are very valuable. The sugar pine in the latitude of New York is hardy, but does not grow as rapidly as it does in the West. The same may be said of the Jeffrey bull pine, but I shall show you some thriftier trees of this latter species tomorrow on my property. A very pretty striped nut is that of the _Pinus pinea_. This is the Italian pignolia, and you may buy them in the confectionery stores in this country. They are used as a dessert nut chiefly, but form an important food supply in some parts of Europe. The Swiss stone pine, _Pinus cembra_, is one of the hardy nut pines, fruitful in this vicinity, and the _Pinus Armandi_, the Korean pine and the Lace-bark pine from central China, are hardy and fruitful in this vicinity, to our knowledge.
Two very handsome pine nuts are those of the Digger pine, _Pinus Sabiniana_ and the Big-cone pine, _Pinus Coulteri_. Both trees are hardy in this latitude, but I have not been able to locate any which are of bearing age as yet. The nuts have a rich dark brown or nearly black and tan shading. The nut of the Digger pine is very highly prized by the Indians and is larger and better in quality than the nut of the Big-cone pine which looks so much like it.
Nuts of the Torrey pine have been somewhat difficult to secure for planting, because they are esteemed so highly for food purposes that they have been collected rather closely by local people in the small area in which this species is found, on our Pacific Coast. It is improbable that the Torrey pine will be hardy much above our most southern states.
We do not advertise dealers in our association as a rule, but Mr. Thomas J. Lane, of Dresher, Pennsylvania, is not likely to make any great fortune from his sale of pine nuts to us. Consequently, I am stating at this point that Mr. Lane has offered to go to the trouble of securing pine nuts from different parts of the world for our members who wish to plant different species experimentally. I have given him a list of species to be kept permanently on file, and the list is marked in such a way that ones which are known to be hardy, semi-hardy, or fruitful in the latitude of New York may be selected for experimental planting. I hope that some of our southern planters will plant South American, Asiatic, African and Australian species of nut pines for purposes of observation. Mr. Lane will get the seed for them.