162 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



hickory, or chestnut at three to fiv^e years' growth, with the 

 tops all on, the loss will be large. 



I have a shellbark hickory, raised by the late Francis Dana, 

 of Roxbury. He selected the largest nuts he could from 

 bushels, and planted them in Dorchester. He dug with a 

 trowel under them in July, when they were six to eight 

 inches high, and cut the tap-root six inches below the sur- 

 face. At two or three years of age they were transplanted 

 and grew up five to eight feet, when various parties bought 

 them. They are bearing fruit now. Their age is about fifteen 

 years. One of mine is eight inches in diameter and twenty 

 feet high. It bore half a bushel of nuts the past season, and 

 has fruited for five years past. 



Dr. Geo. B. Emerson. What is the character of the nut? 



Mr. Manning. It is a shellbark nut, very thin-shelled. 

 I think Mr. Dana root-pruned or transplanted the tree more 

 than once. They were transplanted from his ground very 

 successfully, for I have seen them growing in several places. 



If I could remove the whole class of nut-bearing trees, also 

 the soft-rooted trees, such as the magnolia, tulip, butternut, 

 black walnut, virgilia lutea, etc., my choice would be to do 

 it rather late in the season, say about the middle of May in 

 this latitude, or just as the buds are swelling, and reduce the 

 tops at the. time of planting. Those are all hardy trees when 

 once established. 



There is something peculiar about the evergreens. If I were 

 to name a particular month for transplanting them, it would be 

 May. The general opinion is that June is the month to plant all 

 evergreens ; but June is too late to begin. It is better to be 

 done planting all evergreens by June 1. It often depends 

 much upon who does the work. Along our boundary lines, 

 by several house lots, some six hundred feet in length was 

 planted with arbor-vitte trees, six to ten feet high. They 

 were planted, as time favored, from June 4 to June 25. Some 

 were watered, and some were not, as the soil and water 

 varied. Sometimes the weather was very warm. We were 

 personally at the work. The tops and many of the side 

 branches Avere cut back severely to the height of five or six 

 feet. The result is, not one dead tree in the six hundred feet 

 of hedge, or nearly four hundred trees. It is all now visible 



