240 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



tablish itself firmly in the well prepared and enriched soil. The young tree 

 makes a rapid growth, and will, by repeated manuring, with the advent of 

 each succeeding spring, bear after the sixth or seventh year of its transjilant- 

 ing. In 1873, 1 planted in my garden trees not quite three years old ; thej' 

 began to bear six years after, and this season their branchlets were bending 

 under the heavy clusters of fruit of fine quality. They measure from twen- 

 ty-eight to thirty-two inches in circumference, and are over fifty feet high. 

 To show how quickly this tree responds, in the quality and quantity of its 

 crop, to the application of fertilizing agents, I will state that the season be- 

 fore last, when the manuring of the trees was neglected, the crop was an en- 

 tire failure; the largest jmrt of the nuts were badly filled or entirely empty; 

 whereas, in the present season, under a generous supply of the compost 

 mentioned, the fruit was abundant and the nuts excellent. With the fif- 

 teenth year the tree begins to yield profitable returns. The following in- 

 stance will serve as an illustration of this fact. A tree, planted in mj' im- 

 mediate neighborhood from the seed in October, 1867, yielded, this fall, two 

 and one-half bushels of nuts, which were of a high grade, and sold at the best 

 market price throughout, at twenty cents per pound, to a dealer. This is a 

 return of thirty dollars from one tree. This tree I found to measure sixty 

 inches in circumference, and sixty-five feet in height. Mr. Vail, one of our 

 j^rincipal dealers, who is doing his best to encourage the cultivation of the 

 pecan tree in the vicinity of Mobile, paid, this winter, $125 for the product 

 of five trees of the same age, at the average price of eighteen cents per pound 

 for thje nuts. The}' were of the fine, thin-shelled kind, of good size and fine 

 fi ivor. The demand for such qualities is large, and hundreds of barrels 

 would have found a ready market at the same rates, to meet the inquiries- 

 Isolated as these instances might appear, they can not fail to serve as a proof 

 of the profit to be derived from the cultivation of the pecan tree, and its im- 

 portance as a resource of the low-priced lands along the Gulf shore in that 

 section. 



Among the insects injurious to the pecan tree only the tent caterpillar has 

 so far been observed, which seems to infest it before all others; jmins must 

 be taken for its destruction as soon as it shows itself. 



The attempts to raise the pecan, with any degree of success, on the rolling, 

 sandy pinelands have all resulted in failure. The want of retentiveness of 

 •their thirsty, silicious soil renders the application of fertilizers of no benefit. 

 It fails, also, in soils with a rocky substratum, impeding^the deeply penetrat- 

 ing tap-root in its growth. 



This tree varies greatly in the size and quality of its fruit. These variations 

 ■are produced by different conditions of climate and soil, but seem principally 

 to depend on the amount of nutritive elements of the soil. The way for the 

 improvement of the nut is chiefly to be found in the liberal application of the 

 proper fertilizing agents already indicated. The propagation of the best va- 

 rieties is most easily effected through the seeds, whose offspring remains true 

 to its kind, if properly treated. The experiments in grafting have not led to 



