"Perhaps," I advised him, "that is a trade name to cover the real
origin, just as plucked muskrat is termed Hudson seal."

That, too, he denied. We were both insistent. I was sure of my own
knowledge and stubborn enough to want to prove him wrong. I pulled a
drawer from the dresser of the "French walnut" suite and asked him to
compare its weight with that of a similar drawer from a black walnut
suite nearby. Black walnut weighs forty pounds per cubic foot, while
butternut weighs only twenty-five. He was forced to admit the difference
and finally allowed my assertion to stand that "French walnut" was
butternut, stained and finished to simulate black walnut. Since it would
have been illegal to claim that it was black walnut, the attractive but
meaningless label of "French walnut" had been applied. Although it is
less expensive, I do not mean to imply that butternut is not an
excellent wood for constructing furniture. It ranks high in quality and
is probably as durable as black walnut. I do say, though, that it was
necessary for me to know both the species names and the relative weights
of each wood to be able to distinguish between them indisputably.

An instance in which the nuts themselves were useless for purposes of
identification occurred when I sent some black walnuts to the Division
of Pomology at Washington, D. C. These were the Ohio variety which I had
grafted on butternut roots. The tree had been bearing for three or four
years but this was the first year the nuts had matured. During their
bearing period, these black walnuts had gradually changed in appearance,
becoming elongated and very deeply and sharply corrugated like
butternuts although they still retained the black walnut flavor. Because
of this mixture of characteristics, the government experts had great
difficulty in identifying the variety, although the Ohio was well known