Atlantic Coast is not known, but of the nuts thus far mentioned it has
proved to be the least promising for the Eastern section. Sometimes said
to be "as hardy as the peach," it has been found to be the most exacting
in its requirements of soil and climate of any important nut now grown
in this country. Except with certain of the hardshell varieties, no
almonds are now known to be in any sense successful east of the Rocky
Mountains. According to Wickson (E. J.) in his _California Fruits_, the
almond is known to have been introduced into California previous to
1853. At that time efforts to build up an almond industry on the Pacific
Coast began to assume a somewhat serious air. After a half century of
trials and more or less persistent effort by the California planters the
culture of this nut has developed into the third most important nut
industry in the United States. As for the time being, the growing of
Persian walnuts centered in southern California, so did the growing of
almonds in the Sacramento Valley of northern California.

During the whole of this period of early American nut growing history,
little attention in any part of the country was paid to the native nuts.
However, in the southeastern part of the United States there existed a
large portion of the country to which no choice species of nut trees
were either indigenous or had been introduced. Necessity, curious
interest, and, more probably intelligent purpose, prompted sea captains,
plying from West to East Gulf Coast ports, Easterners returning home
from visits in the West, Westerners visiting in the East, and no doubt
nomadic bands of Indians, to carry pecans from the Mississippi River and
beyond, to the coast of Mississippi, to Alabama and the South Atlantic
States, where they were planted as seed. For fully a century the species
gradually spread over the plains sections of the eastern Gulf and South
Atlantic States. In 1846, according to Taylor (William A.) in the
Yearbook (Department of Agriculture) of 1904, a Louisiana slave