HICKORY NUTS. 187 



of propagating these trees, prior to his with the Hales' 

 Paper-shell. 



In reply to a note sent him a few months since, ask- 

 ing : "How did or do you graft the hickories?" he 

 replied as follows : "I put the hickory stocks in pots in 

 the spring, and graft them the following spring, say in 

 April, and in the house. The cions are cut during the 

 winter, so as to keep them in good order until wanted 

 for use. I find it is better to operate in April than 

 earlier in the winter. I also graft them out of doors 

 about the beginning of May, when the stocks are grow- 

 ing. They will succeed very well out of doors, provided 

 the stocks are large enough for the cions. Any kind of 

 grafting will do, but crown grafting is the best. I have 

 not done much of late in the way of grafting hickories 

 in the nursery, not having suitable stocks ; besides, when 

 the weather becomes warm enough for outside work, veg- 

 etation pushes far too rapidly to give a man a chance to 

 do much of this kind of grafting." 



Since the above was written and while these pages 

 were being put in type, Mr. Jackson Dawson, of the 

 Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, Mass., has given his 

 method of grafting the hickories, in Garden and Forest, 

 Feb. 19, 1896, as follows : 



"My method," writes Mr. Dawson, "has been to 

 side-graft, using a cion with part of the second year's 

 wood attached, binding it firmly and covering it with 

 damp sphagnum until the union has been made. The 

 best time I have found for the operation under glass has 

 been during February, and the plants have been kept 

 under glass until midsummer, and wintered the first 

 year in a cold frame. In all the genera I find certain 

 species which may be called free stocks, that is, stocks 

 which take grafts more readily than others. Thus, 

 nearly all the oaks will graft readily on Quercus Robur ; 

 the birches will graft more easily on Betula alba than 



