184 THE NUT CULTUKIST. 



single instance in which either annuUir or any other 

 form of either budding or grafting had been successfully 

 practiced. The Bulletins issued from the Division of 

 Pomology of the Department of Agriculture, give us no 

 information whatever on this subject of propagation of 

 the hickories, further than to repeat the old formulas of 

 annular, splice and cleft grafting ; but as to results they 

 have always been provokingly silent. 



Having been repeatedly assured, by men who pre- 

 sumed to know, that the pecan tree was successfully 

 propagated in the South by grafting, and many thou- 

 sands annually raised in this way, it seems strange that 

 such plants are so rarely offered by nurserymen. Seed- 

 lings of choice varieties are, of course, abundant enough, 

 but a man might, with as much propriety, offer seedling 

 Bartlett pears or Baldwin apples, as pecan trees, expect- 

 ing to perpetuate varieties. In corresponding with Mr. 

 P. J. Berckmans, of the Pruitland Nurseries of Augusta, 

 Gil., whose experience and acquaintance with the fruits 

 of the South are, without doubt, in advance of any other 

 horticulturist of the past or even the present generation, 

 in reply to my request for information on grafting 

 pecans, he writes : "For the past five or six years we 

 have grafted various varieties of the pecau nuts. I do 

 not know of any other nurseryman South who offers 

 grafted trees. I presume the reason of this is, the 

 great difficulty in having the grafts take, as we seldom 

 have more than fifteen, to twenty-five per cent grow. 

 We usually crown graft in February, using one-year-old 

 seedlings grown in nursery rows. Owing to the small 

 percentage of grafts which grow, grafted trees must, 

 necessarily, be quite expensive, and for this reason there 

 are so few attempts made in this method of propagation." 



Mr. Berckmans makes no reference to annular bud- 

 ding of the pecan, so strongly and frequently recom- 

 mended by the several writers already quoted, although 



