MISCELLA.NEOUS PAPERS. - 289 



has pat out of the way many a noble tree that it will take half a century 

 to produce one like it. 



The time will come when all kinds of nuts will be valuable on 

 account of their scarcity. 



In my youth I knew a hickory tree in a field that 8100 would not 

 have tempted my father to cut down ; a noble chestnut tree that $500 

 would not have purchased. In my clearings here all the walnut trees 

 are left, and I have one that bears pear-shaped balls, although the nut 

 inside is round. It is large, full of good meat, and it will stand as long 

 as I own the land. Our native nuts bear only every other year, as it 

 takes one season to prepare the buds that produce the nuts. 



It is too late in life for me to plant nuts with any hope of seeing 

 them bear fruit, but the younger generation should not neglect it. 

 They do not come into bearing as soon as other fruit trees, but they 

 last a lifetime of man. 



In our latitude the kinds worth attention are the hickory, pecan, 

 chestnut and hazelnut. The latter I have tried for fifteen years here, 

 but never get a dozen of nuts. These are of the finer varieties, while 

 the wild native flourishes and bears abundantly. The squirrels and 

 other animals usually get the most of them. 



The wild ones I have never transplanted, but suppose they might 

 do well under such cultivation (or rather no cultivation) as they get in 

 their wild state. 



From seed I have never tried to raise them, but suppose that if 

 slighily covered with earth in the fall they would grow. 



The hickory will grow readily if planted in the fall, and contrary to 

 the general opinion, will grow when four years old after being in a box 

 in a drawer all that lime. This I have proven. 



Of the pecan I once raised 1000 seedlings and gave them to the 

 department at Washington to distribute. They were the largest hardy 

 ones I have met with. These nuts I got fresh from the tree ; had them 

 in a sack for several weeks, then packed them in clean sand so that 

 they seldom touched one another. 



This box was set on the ground in an exposed place to all kinds 

 of weather. In the spring, when the weather became warm, they com- 

 menced to show their germinating, and wore planted in nursery rows 

 one inch deep and six inches apart. 



They were well cultivated, and not one in ten failed to grow. 



They made but small tops, only from six inches to a foot, but what 

 they lacked in tops they made up in root ; 18 and 20 inches were by 

 no means rare under ground. 



H— 19 



