Subsequent to this rather limited and scattered planting on the Atlantic Coast, by perhaps three hundred years, the Persian walnut put in its appearance on the Pacific Coast.  According to Bulletin No. 231 by the University of California, it is probable that occasional trees were planted in that state long before the discovery of gold in 1848.  Following that date, planting became much more general, but usually with hardshell strains and always with seedling trees.  From these early trees the crops were never of great importance.  In 1867 Mr. Joseph Sexton of Santa Barbara, planted a sack of walnuts bought in the markets of San Francisco, which he had reason to believe had been grown in Chili.  Of the resulting trees some were very good, others mediocre, and some worthless.  Later on, nuts from the best of these trees were planted, and second generation seedlings produced.  In this way the famous Santa Barbara Papershell type of walnut was evolved.  With it developed an industry which among the tree products of southern California is now second only to that of the orange.  In 1910, the census takers found that in the year preceding, the crop of walnuts of southern California, which, by the way, came almost entirely from four counties, was valued at more than that of the total crop of all other nuts grown in the United States put together.

Four years after Mr. Sexton of southern California had planted this sack of walnuts from San Francisco, Mr. Felix Gillet of Nevada City, in northern California, began the introduction of French walnuts both by seed and scions.  Out of his efforts and those of others who subsequently joined him, developed the walnut industry of northern California, which now bids fair some day to equal that of the lower part of the state.  The famous French varieties of Franquette and Mayette were introduced by Mr. Gillet, and from seedlings of his growing evolved the Concord, the San Jose, and no doubt the Chase varieties.[1]

A nut which probably has received equally as much, if not more, attention at the hands of experimental planters in this part of the country is the chestnut.  Just when the introduction of foreign strains began, history seems to have failed to make clear; but according to Powell[2] general dissemination in the Delaware section began with introductions by Eleuthers Irenee du Pont de Nemours, made at about 1803.  It is said that some of the original trees planted at that time near the present site of the du Pont Powder mills by Mr. du Pont, still survived when Mr. Powell recorded their history in 1898.

The spread of both European and Japanese chestnuts and their general trial throughout the Eastern States has been narrated at former meetings of this association.  The chestnut blight, discovered on Long Island in 1904, after it had apparently gained several years’ headway, and which now seems fairly certain to have been introduced from Japan, has so monopolized the attention of orchardists, foresters, landscape gardeners