Items of Interest April 10, 1915 Issue

Items of Interst

The English walnut is attracting wide interest in Pennsylvania as a commercial orchard tree. Scarcely a week goes by at the Pennsylvania State College without inquiries. These are usually prompted by the knowledge that already within the state there are bearing trees which have proved their ability both to withstand the cold and bear abundant crops of nuts. Because of the interst manifested in these nuts, the department of horticulture of the college has planned a thorough investigation of the subject. It is known that English walnut trees are succeeding in other eastern states besides Pennsylvania. In Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey are many small groves of such trees. There are also a few in Connecticut, and even in western New York, in the Lake Ontario fruit belt, and on the south shores of the inland lakes.

Testimony that the western railroads, instead of becoming impoverished, have in the last five years earned more revenue than ever before in their history, and put these earnings largely into building and the betterment of their plants, was offered last week at the interstate commerce commission hearing of the forty-one western railroads' petition for higher rates on certain commodities. Appearing in opposition to the railroads' plea that they be permitted to charge rates which will yield them at least ten million dollars a year more revenue, the statistician of the Iowa railroads, commission asserted that the railroads, judged by statistics which he compiled, were prosterous.

The secretary of the navy, describing the system of instruction and training of the men of the fleets, says the navy has the greatest school in the world. "Harvard and Yale," he continued, "may be large institutions of education, but they are tiny affairs compared with the naval educational system of the United States, where every ship is a school and every officer an instructor and teacher." The secretary said his rule of abolishing imprisonment in the navy for desertion had worked successfully. He asserted that the banishment of the "wine room" on board ship had resulted in a higher standard of discipline and efficiency, acknowledged now by those who at first had opposed the change.

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