78 LUTHER BURBANK 



the hickory tree from the woods and give it a 

 place within the territory of the orchardist. 



The reason for this, doubtless, is that the 

 hickory is a tree of very slow growth, and that it 

 is also exceedingly difficult to propagate by 

 budding or grafting, or any other process except 

 from the seed. 



The prospect of improving the product of a 

 tree that does not bear until it is ten or fifteen 

 years old, and that resists all efforts to force it to 

 early bearing, is not alluring, considering the 

 short span of human life. Yet we can scarcely 

 doubt that the hickory nut will soon be brought 

 within the ken of the plant experimenter, 

 and that there will ultimately be developed 

 nuts of very choice varieties, comparable in size, 

 probably, to the English walnut, and having a 

 quality that will place them at least on a par with 

 any other nut now grown in the temperate zones. 



Even in the wild state the best of shellbark 

 hickories bear nuts of unchallenged quality. It 

 is a matter of course that these nuts can be 

 improved by cultivation and selective breeding. 



Material for such selective breeding is fur- 

 nished abundantly by the wide variation of hick- 

 ories in the wild state, I had observed this varia- 

 tion in my boyhood days, just as I had noted the 

 variation in the chestnuts. The shagbark hick- 



