46 NUT GROWING 



for planting purposes, not realizing that according to 

 the laws of inheritance many ancestors will appear in 

 young trees growing from these nuts. Some of 

 these ancestors may have borne small thick-shelled 

 nuts. Nuts then are not to be planted in the expec- 

 tation of developing valuable crop trees. They are 

 to be planted chiefly to serve as stocks which are to 

 be grafted later to kinds which are known to have 

 superior qualities. If a man has speculative instinct 

 and patience, two things which do not quite belong 

 together, he may plant seedling trees and then sit 

 down and wait to see what they will do. After 

 waiting for nineteen years and then finding the whole 

 lot to be inferior for fruiting purposes he may graft 

 the trees all over to good kinds which may bear in 

 two or three years. Hundreds of acres of seedling 

 pecan hickories and seedling Persian walnuts are 

 now on the way to disappoint their owners. A par- 

 ticularly desirable nut or fruit of any sort represents 

 what naturalists call fluctuating variation rather than 

 mutation. In the work of a plant breeder it may 

 be the result of a fortuitous cross. In accordance 

 with known laws the planting of large nuts will 

 give trees bearing nuts of mean or average type for 

 the most part. More important still is the fact that 

 a prolific bearing tree is an exception and most of 

 the seedling trees will not be very productive, pro- 

 ductiveness being a special feature of varieties se- 

 lected for that purpose when we graft. 



Nuts which are to be used for planting purposes 

 should be stored over the winter in such a way that 



