166 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



also like to know how to graft hickories ; a friend of his had suc- 

 ceeded once and failed forty times. 



Mr. Dawson suggested that there might not have been any fraud 

 in regard to Col. "Wilson's magnolias ; the cons2)icua ma}' have been 

 grafted on the acuminata and the graft broken off. 



President Moore said that the paper which had been read was 

 very interesting to him. It shows the reasons for failure in raising 

 seedlings. It gave kim great satisfaction to raise anything from 

 seed himself, whether it paid in dollars and cents or not, and he 

 liked to know how to do it. 



Aaron D. Capen wanted people to cultivate a taste for trees, 

 and to plant rough, rock}- pastures with them. This can easily be 

 done in autumn by taking a small iron bar and making a hole 

 about two inches deep, and dropping in a chestnut, hickory nut, or 

 acorn. He had seen quite a grove of chestnuts planted in this 

 way. If a gentleman in middle life will do this he will wake up 

 some morning astonished at the results. It can easily be done in 

 the course of a pleasant ramble ; if you take fiftv nuts in your 

 pocket twenty of them will grow, and Nature will take care of 

 them. If you want trees for tiiuber plant them rather thickl}^, 

 but if you want them for ornament or for the nuts they should have 

 room to spread thirty feet or more. The speaker had sent choice 

 hickory nuts of his own raising to a friend in Georgia. Trees 

 with only tap roots are more apt to blow over than those with 

 spreading roots. 



Mr. Dawson said, in answer to an inquiry as to the best time to 

 plant apple aud pear seed, that it must either be planted in the 

 fall, or washed out of the pomace and packed in sand aud placed 

 in a cellar. It may be sown with a drill in the spring. If not 

 put in sand, but allowed to get dry, onlv part will come up the 

 first year. He had seen the seeds of apples and peaches planted 

 of which none came up until the second year. 



President Moore said that he had kept apple seed in boxes in 

 sand successfulh' until spring. 



The Committee on Discussion announced for the next Saturday 

 a paper by Hon. Marsliall P. "Wilder, on the " Nomenclature of 

 Fruits," after the reading of which Hon. James J. H. Gregor}- 

 would speak of " Nitrogen in Agriculture." 



