For ornamental planting, too, nut trees may often be chosen to advantage. For the farm yard they are often the best choice. Hickories or black walnut are long lived trees and the hickory is very ornamental. A great many trees have been planted by the school children of the State; and right here is a good field for planting, around our school houses. The average country school ground is a forlorn place, usually barren of both grass and shade. While we perhaps cannot have a lawn, we can certainly have shade trees, and the children will take care of them and watch their development with interest, particularly if they have a part in planting them. A few years ago the College distributed about 6000 trees to the schools of the state for Arbor Day and many of these trees were black walnuts. During the last few years, the Collage has not raised enough of these trees to meet the demand.
As memorial trees, also, nut trees are being quite extensively planted. A great many black walnuts have been planted in the honor of our soldiers who gave their lives in the war and it is a very suitable tree to plant for this purpose.
Now that our forests are becoming more scarce, we are beginning to appreciate more fully the value of their products. Nuts, extracts, maple syrup and many minor products are obtained from our native trees. If man could be surrounded with the right assortment of trees, he would need little else. He would have food in the nuts and fruit; fire wood and building material in the stems, as well as paper and clothing from the wood pulp. He would have sugar from the sap, medicine from the bark, and he would have wood distillates, turpentine and resin. He could live long and well on the products of our forests.
Our forests are, however, disappearing. Our native nut trees are being cut off. Our sugar maple orchards are being put into farm land, and forest products are increasing rapidly in price. We have got to keep a certain part of the country in forests in order to have the country prosperous, and to do this we must either plant trees or so manage the existing forests that they will renew themselves naturally. In planting trees, we should not overlook the by-products of the trees, nuts and syrup and bark. These products are often the main crop in themselves and in any case, they will increase the receipts and make our forestry work more profitable.