86 



the subject of hickories alone to the exclusion of all other occupa- 

 tion. 



In the beginning of the development of my nut trees there were 

 failures continually and it became interesting. Lord Byron found it 

 interesting to live in order to see what was going to happen next. 

 My failures were so interesting that I was very curious to know what 

 was going to happen next. I started in with a very large lot of 

 shagbark hickory trees. I had them grafted for me in the South. T 

 think I expended something like $250 for that lot. I had it grafted 

 upon the common hickory stock of the_ South. They lived through 

 the winter, the summer, and the next winter, but in the spring, fol- 

 lowing a few warm days and a freeze, the bark of every one of those 

 common stocks exploded, fairly, and the entire lot was lost, not one 

 tree lived. 



A great many trees that I brought from farther south, from 

 California and from the Pacific coast, all died. I learned then that 

 the climate there will allow trees from western Europe to grow 

 because they have the Japanese current furnishing similar conditions 

 of climate; that trees from that part of the country would be mostly 

 failures here in the East; and that trees for the East should come 

 from northeast Asia where climatic conditions are similar. 



I learned also that trees from a distance, not accustomed to our 

 soil and climate, would not adapt themselves readily, and it would 

 require long selection and breeding to acclimatize or adapt to our 

 soil trees which were developed under differing conditions. Out of 

 a large lot of things that I got from Chili, hoping that their altitude 

 would correspond to our latitude, nothing grew. Consequently by 

 elimination of things that would not live I gradually arrived at the 

 conclusion that it is best for any locality to develop the species, or a 

 like kind of tree, which belong to that locality. Well, they say, how 

 about the prairies that are treeless? Of course we have there to deal 

 with a question of fire that from time immemorial has swept the 

 prairies covered with grass and has been halted only when it 

 reached the regions of established forests; so that on the prairies I 

 have no doubt we may have great groves of nut trees flourishing. 

 In my locality the trees that are indigenous are the ones which do 

 the best, and that is the line for perseverance. 



Then I took up hybridization. I found there were many dis- 

 appointments. It was difficult to be sure of securing reliable pollen 

 and of getting it to the flowers at the right time and surely, so that 

 we would have good hybrids instead of parthenogens which some- 

 times develop as the result of the female not making fusion with its 

 mate. 



On one occasion I remember I covered a lot of branches with 

 large bags for pollenization, and going out a few days later to add 

 pollen I found a wren's nest with two eggs in one of my bags. Now 

 if a wren could lay two eggs in one of those bags the cross-polleniza- 

 tion was not likely to be a success. In this work, however, I find that 



