Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 300, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1919 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

NUT TREES FOR THE HIGHWAY In Many Respects They Are More Suitable Than the Varieties Which Bear Fruit. When it was suggested that fruit trees be planted along the sides of American roadways, as is the custom in some parts of Europe, a good many people must have had their doubts about the feasibility of the plan in a country where a considerable portion of the population has still to learn carefully to respect public rights and property, especially when the rights are unfamiliar and the property a kind that nobody is under a special —and salaried—obligation to protect. Another and probably more hopeful / proposal is to plant, nor fruit trees, but nut trees, as highway ornaments and possible sources of profit. Many of our native nut trees are far more beautiful to the eye than fruit trees ever are, and they are as much superior, too, as providers of shade. They are much better able than fruit trees to take care of themselves, because their flowers are inconspicuous. Their product is a valuable one, and its fairly equitable distribution every year could safely be left to the children of any given neighborhood. One of New York's eminent physicians, Dr. Robert T. Morris, has been preaching for years and years the value of nut trees. He even goes so far as to insist that, if humanity had turned to these trees instead of to th© cereals for its main souY<!tef>f vegetable food —starch and oil—it could have been fed better than now and at much less expenditure of labor. Whether Doctor Morris is right or wrong in that large claim, there is no doubt that our country roads would be made pleasanter for all who use them if they were Jjnrned, into majestic avenues bordered by such trees as hickories, beeches, chestnuts, oaks and a dozen other nucifers.