Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

While going through the orchards at Grenoble in France, I asked a man "What is the matter with that tree?" This was on June 9th. "There is nothing the matter," he told me, "it is only coming into leaf." I want to call your attention to possibilities of a hybrid of that tree and the Maryland tree. The Persian walnuts of the Grenoble tree were of good quality, but low yield. The Maryland tree is a heavy yielder but of third quality.

In this matter of variety, I want to emphasize Dr. Morris's point of the great possibilities of the oriental walnut. Great results are likely to be attained from the introduction of these species into Pennsylvania, New York and elsewhere in this country.

Second: What is a good walnut? They may be divided into three qualities:

1. Positively sweet.
2. Neutral.
3. Those with a little bitterness in the skin of the kernel, which
develops as you masticate the kernel.

Most of those which distinguish themselves for good yield here in the East are unfortunately of the third class. I have taken samples of these to commercial dealers. One of the largest walnut buyers in Philadelphia classifies the Grenobles as first class. The California crop he classes second quality but pays more for it. Most of the California quality is second class. Eastern nuts are mostly third class. I found one in New Jersey which was almost first class.

First quality apples are not grown for the market. They are consumed by the growers. They know the market would not pay for them. They sell mostly the second and third class apples. The present market for nuts is like the apple market. The nut dealer told me to send along nuts, like several eastern samples, and he would sell them, even though they were third quality. He has assured me that if he had the nuts he could sell them.

Investigate every good nut tree you hear about. Very good results may come from this. You don't know what you may learn by doing so. If you will ask about it every time you hear of a good nut tree, good will be accomplished. We are going to keep on finding these trees for the next twenty-five years. Will you help the process along?

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MR. POMEROY: In the smaller towns, where the grocery men buy of the boys, if they will ask them about the trees from which they get good nuts you will locate many good trees.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I understand in California they have been planting walnut trees for thirty to forty years but have never yet agreed on the matter of varieties. One of the very practical questions before this association is the determination of the best varieties to set. I would like to hear from some of the members on this question of varieties.

MR. RUSH: I would like to say a word about this matter. We cannot be too severe on quality. We might ask ourselves today what is the matter with the peach crop. The physical changes and conditions are responsible not only for the peach crop, but the nut crop as well. The weather has unfortunate effects on certain varieties of the walnut. So we must make allowance for weather conditions.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Excuse me for butting in so often. I should like to ask Mr. Rush a question. I highly respect his judgment. If he were planting a walnut orchard of 500 trees in the latitude between Philadelphia and Washington, I should like to know what varieties he would plant and in what proportion?

MR. RUSH: Well, that is a question that would require a little consideration. Now we have some very good varieties. You have a very good variety known as the Holden. I would like to know more of it. One I would choose would be the Nebo, and another originating on my place, and called the Rush, is productive and good quality and a most excellent pollenizer. We have another fine walnut in Adams County, introduced by John Garretson, from California. Then we have other types, the Lancaster, and the Alpine. Hall, in Erie County is noted for its good size, not strictly a commercial nut. Something like the Holden, Garretson and Rush Parisienne are my favorite varieties.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I think we are getting some really valuable information now. We must plant the best varieties we have. I think we might start with Mr. Rush's list and have the varieties analyzed. I think this will be of use when we are called upon to advise people.

THE SECRETARY: If I were going to make a choice of the varieties of walnuts, I should name the Franquette, Mayette and Parisienne. Mr. Rush says that his Rush variety is practically a Parisienne. The Garretson walnuts seem to be of these varieties. These have been producing good crops of nuts. It is my opinion that at this time these are the most promising varieties for use in the East.

THE PRESIDENT: I wish to say that a tree of the Mayette variety or one greatly resembling it has been living in Pennsylvania for fifteen years and bearing crops. There is little doubt that the Mayette is the best walnut on the market.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Well, is there anything really surprising, when you consider the origin of these trees? These varieties originally came from the Grenoble district in France. France lies north of the 42d parallel. This is the northern boundary of Pennsylvania and runs through Michigan. But France has a maritime climate.

THE PRESIDENT: If I may act as geographer for a moment, there are two things in connection with the foreign climate. The maritime climate is cooler in summer and milder in winter. Over here fungus invasion does great harm but the climate there is detrimental to the fungi and keeps them in subjection. I call attention again to that Mayette in Pennsylvania for sixteen years, as a matter of fact, not theory, an achievement on which we can act with some certainty.

The hour for adjournment has come. This afternoon at 1:30 we have been invited to visit nut trees in the neighborhood in automobiles kindly loaned for the occasion. Tonight at 8 we meet here again.

THE SECRETARY: I want to say a word in regard to Mr. Baker's remarks. The purpose of this association is chiefly educational, but in order that we may be educational, and in order that we may give the man in the street some definite information, in response to his inquiries, we ourselves must first investigate these matters, such as the question of varieties. This is a point that appeals to me particularly. People ask me what nuts to plant, and how to plant them. We must advise them. One thing that we may tell them is that it is advisable to plant about the grounds high priced, grafted nut trees. It is not advisable to plant high class, grafted trees along fences or roads. They will usually do badly or fail. Grafted trees require careful attention and proper treatment. The proper thing to do along fences and roadsides is to graft the native nut trees already established there, or to plant native nuts abundantly in order that later we may have established nut trees to graft.

Adjournment at 12:30 P.M.

WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSION

The evening session was called to order at 8:40 P.M. by President Smith. The total attendance of the evening was approximately one hundred.

The evening was devoted to two stereopticon lectures, the first being slides by Professor Fagan, illustrating the lecture of the afternoon on the "Nut Survey of Pennsylvania."

This was followed by an illustrated lecture by Dr. J. Russell Smith, President of the Association.

NEW TREE CROPS AND A NEW AGRICULTURE

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

DR. J. RUSSELL SMITH, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

We have all heard of the scientist who made a discovery and exclaimed, "Thank God! This can't be of any possible use to anybody!" This useless aspect of science in a world with so many possibilities of service does not appeal to me. I hope that science and service and utility may go hand in hand.

The conservation of natural resources, the creation of new ones is a topic which combines the qualities of science, service and utility.

Of all our resources the soil is the most vital. Most of the others have some possibility of substitution, but for the soil there is no substitute. The forest burned to destruction can rise again if the soil remains. Some examination will show that the most vital part of the whole conservation matter is the preservation of the soil, and that soil conservation is 99 per cent the prevention of erosion. Soil robbery by unscientific agriculture can go to its most extreme lengths and reduce the soil to the depths of non-productivity; but scientific agriculture can, by the addition of humus and some fertilizer, soon restore such soil to high fertility. In these conditions of exhaustion the loss to fertility by soil leaching is small, because of the non-soluble character of the earth particles. Thus experiments at Cornell have shown that in the average foot of top soil from rather unproductive farms in a low state of production, there was plant food sufficient for 6,000 crops of corn. We have all seen a single thunder shower remove from a hillside corn field the fertility adequate for the making of a hundred crops of corn.

American agriculture is peculiarly soil destructive. Three of our greatest money crops--corn, cotton and tobacco--require that the earth shall, throughout the summer, be loose and even furrowed with the cultivator, which prepares the ground for washing away, and by its furrow starts the gully. The second factor in this peculiarly destructive agriculture is the fact of our emphasis of rainfall in summer. Third in the list of factors of destruction is the rainfall unit, the thunder shower, which dumps water, hundreds of tons per hour on every hillside acre. A little examination of the facts and careful inclusion of the time element will show that the old-world saying, "After man the desert" is quite as true in the United States as in Europe and Asia, where it has been so fearfully proven in the seats of ancient empire.

This soil resource destruction from erosion leads to the destruction of other valuable resources. We appear to be upon the eve of an epoch of waterway construction and experiment. The greatest injury to waterways is channel filling by down-washed mud. Pittsburgh has been praised highly for the energetic action of her Chamber of Commerce and citizens in appropriating money for the careful survey of drainage basins above the river, with the idea of obtaining knowledge preparatory to the building of reservoirs to check floods. They have forty-three reservoir sites, and the early construction of nineteen of these reservoirs is recommended.

A part of the reservoir plan, however, is that the land above it shall not be cultivated; otherwise the erosion from the tilled fields will promptly fill up the reservoirs, as the present condition of many eastern mill dams so emphatically attests. The carrying out, therefore, of the Pittsburgh reservoir plan necessitates the exodus of hundreds of thousands of farmers and the restriction of many farming communities to forest or a new type of agriculture.

We cannot spare all this land from tillage. But fortunately, there are other ways of using it. Land east of the 100th meridian may be divided into three classes: First, which in the absence of better estimate covers one third of the area, is hopeless for agriculture because of hills and rocks. This is mostly now in rather poor forests. The second class, also covering one third--by the same estimate--has been cleared for agriculture, but is so hilly and eroded as to be in a low state of fertility and production. The third class, the remaining third of the land, is suited to the plow and should be plowed and cultivated much more intensively than it now is.

For the first and second classes of land we need a new type of agriculture, the crop-yielding trees. Our agriculture, which depends so largely now upon those members of the grass family which we call grains, is the result of accident, not the result of science. At the dawn of history man had practically all of these small grains, which have probably resulted from the selection and seed saving of the primitive woman, as the race came up from savagery into agriculture. This primitive woman in selecting plants for her garden and little field, did not pick out the best of nature, or the most productive, or the ultimately most promising; she picked annuals because they gave the quickest return. And man has left alone and practically unimproved for all these thousands of years nearly all the great engines of nature, the crop-yielding trees, such as the walnut, hickory, pecan, acorn yielding oak, chestnut, beech, pinenut, hazel, honey locust, mesquite, screw bean, carob, mulberry, persimmon, paw-paw, etc., because their slow growth has deterred us from any attempts at improving them. We have depended upon and greatly improved the quick growing grains, which spend most of their short life in putting up a frame work which promptly perishes; whereas the tree endures like a manufacturing plant. Further than this, most of the grains have a period of crisis, during which they must receive water or the harvest is almost a failure. Thus corn must within a short period receive moisture, or it is too late to produce even husks.

Yet trees are the great engines of nature. The mazzard cherry tree, growing wild throughout the southeastern United States, often yields twenty bushels of fruit. Fifty bushels and upwards are often obtained from the mature apple trees. The walnut yields its bushels, the persimmon breaks with fruit.

Europe shows us an agriculture making considerable use of crop-yielding trees other than the ordinary fruits. Mr. C. F. Cook, of the Department of Agriculture, is the authority for the statement that Mediterranean agriculture began on the basis of tree crops, and there are now about twenty-five such crops in the Mediterranean basin. The oak tree furnishes five, cork bark, an ink producing gall which enters into the manufacture of all our ink, the Valonia, or tannin-yielding acorn, which is an important export from the Balkan states; the truffle worth several million dollars to France; and lastly the acorn. In the Balaeric Isles, I am informed, certain acorns are more prized than chestnuts and the trees yielding them are grafted like apples, and the porker is turned out to make his living picking up acorns where they fall, and enriching his diet with a special kind of fig grown in the same way for his use. We Americans are too industrious; we insist upon putting a pig in a pen and then waiting upon him. The pistachio, the walnut, the filbert and the chestnut are all important tree crops in parts of the Mediterranean countries and many American travelers have probably seen the chestnut orchards of France and Italy, which I have found by examination are able to make the rough and unplowable mountain-side, bristling with rocks, as valuable as the level black prairies of Illinois.

The natural objection may be raised that the utilization of so much hilly land in fruit and nut-yielding trees will give such supplies of new food that people will refuse to use them. The above objection is well founded; but swine, sheep and poultry eat what is given them. I have an example of a farmer of Louisiana, who planted a hillside to mulberry trees. The mulberries held the ground in place by their roots and dropped their black harvest to the ground through three months of summer, and the hogs gathered them up and converted them into pork worth $12 an acre, without any effort on the part of the owner. The mulberry area in the United States is probably close to a million square miles. Over most of the region south of Mason and Dixon's Line the persimmon is a hated tree weed; yet it stands by the millions in fields and fence rows, fairly bending down with a full crop of fruit every other year, which is much sought after by the opossum and other wild animals, and eaten when possible by the American porker from September, the end of the mulberry season, until March, for the persimmon has a habit of dropping its fruit through the long winter period. The oak whose acorns probably made the pig what he is, is almost neglected in America; yet for ages the Indians of the Pacific coast have made their bread from acorns of two species of oak, one of which is now gathered by the farmers of California, put into their barns and bought and sold as stock food. The beechnut and the hickory nut are rich and much prized swine food.

Legumes, of which there are many species, can be grown between nut-yielding trees to maintain the fertility of the soil through the nitrogen gathering nodules upon their roots.

As it often seems desirable to cultivate trees of this character where possible, the tree crops agriculturist is above all others able to adjust his crop and the one device that permits the tillage of hilly land--terracing. Terraces interfere with machinery which is so increasingly essential in the cultivation and harvesting of the present crops. But terracing interferes least of all with the tree crop agriculture, because the trees can stand in the terrace rows and make a fortunate combination of the heavy yielding tree crops and the soil preservation through terracing.

We have an interesting example of tree crop productivity in Hawaii, where the agaroba was introduced from Peru in the last century. It has now spread until it covers considerable area with forests, and information from the Hawaiian Experiment Station is to the effect that it is now the mainstay of the dairy industry of the island. The annual crop of four tons of big beans to the acre can be and is ground into a highly nutritious meal food selling at $25 a ton, an agriculture which, for ease of operation and richness of return, puts Illinois to shame, for, in addition to the $100 worth of animal food, there is a ton of wood per acre every year.

The tree crop agriculture seems to hold the possibility of letting the worst third of our soil (Class 1 as mentioned above) become as productive as the best land (Class 3), while (Class 2) the hill land can probably be doubled in productivity. This is a goal well worthy of much endeavor on the part of the plant breeder.

Tree crops offer equal possibilities for the arid land. The grains with their period of crisis are an uncertain dependence on land of such uncertain rainfall as exists in the United States west of the 100th meridian. This is attested by the fact that some of this land has been settled three times and abandoned twice to the wreckage of hundreds of thousands of private fortunes. Yet the tree with its far-reaching roots and ability to store energy can survive in much of this area where grains are so very uncertain. The mesquite, yet a tree weed over much of this area, has one species which produces a nutritious seed that has been used for bread stuff by unknown generations of Indians. The screw bean, a legume, with a nutritious seed, grows from El Paso to the Imperial Valley; while the broad leafed honey locust, with a seed closely akin to that of the carob, or St. John's Bread, will also grow over wide areas in the arid southwest. Five varieties of the small but productive wild almond have been found by a Government botanist growing upon the shores of Pyramid Lake; while Frank Myer, Plant Explorer of the Department, brings back from Turkestan accounts of wild almonds producing good fruit on mountain slopes with a rainfall of 8 inches a year. These productive plants, several of them legumes, adjusted by nature to this region, with allied species in other continents, seem to hold before the plant breeder the possibilities of hundreds of thousands of square miles of Western orchard ranges of high productivity, rather than the present would-be grass-ranges of low and declining productivity.

I believe that the development of a tree crop agriculture offers one of the greatest possibilities in constructive conservation of natural resources. Individuals cannot be depended upon to do it. The work is too slow. A man might by decades of work create species that would be, if fully utilized, worth a hundred million dollars a year to a state like Pennsylvania; yet he would be unable to realize personal gain from the results, provided he had secured them. Institutions must do it. It is like the Geological Survey and the Census Bureau and Agricultural Experiment Stations, which depend upon appropriations. The appropriations depend upon the realization of the importance of the work. There are interesting examples of similar work already in operation, of which the following might be mentioned: The Agricultural Experiment Station of Arizona has started a twenty-four-year series of experiments in breeding the date palm. In North Dakota, where the blizzards kill nearly all the ordinary fruits, an experimenter has done much work in the breeding of hardy strains of apple, cherry and other trees.

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Then followed a display of lantern slides showing scenes from Spain, Portugal, Balaeric Islands, Sicily, Corsica, Italy, Algeria, Tunis, France and southern and central United States. This collection of pictures revealed a surprising amount of tree crop agriculture already worked out but needing wider application.

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The meeting adjourned without discussion of either lecture at 10 P.M.

THURSDAY MORNING SESSION

The third session of the convention was called to order at 9:50 A.M. with the president, Dr. J. Russell Smith, in the chair. The opening attendance was twenty-eight persons.

THE PRESIDENT: Owing to the fact that business needs to be predigested, we have decided to postpone the amendments to the constitution until this evening's session. We think it will take but a short time to discuss them. Resolutions, informal discussion on seedlings, the chestnut, and similar topics will also be brought up at that time. This morning's session, therefore, will be devoted to the intellectual, rather than the business end.

I know of no subject in which there is greater possibility of securing knowledge than the question of nuts for the north. A few years ago a friend of mine wrote me he had bought some land, and was planting native walnuts in the fence corners to be topworked with English walnuts. I wrote him, recommending oranges instead, telling him he would lose less money. I was basing this advice upon my own bitter experience. The accumulations of nut knowledge in the last few years and the trees now growing on my own place show how ridiculous was my position of a short time ago. This morning I think we are likely to have somewhat similar surprises in a paper by Dr. Morris. He will give us information on the hazel nut, giving his experience with the European varieties.

NOTES ON THE HAZELS

DR. ROBERT T. MORRIS, NEW YORK CITY

The hazels are descended from an ancient and honorable family. Impressions of leaves found in the Upper Cretaceous rocks of the Yellowstone Valley cannot be distinguished from those of the leaves of our two American hazel species of today.

The hazels belong to the _Cupuliferae_ or oak family. Our American species are only two in number, although there are many varieties of the species. The one which is most prized, _Corylus americana_, is found over a wide range of territory and abundantly in many places between Canada and the southern extremity of the Appalachians, and from the central Mississippi valley to the Atlantic coast.

This species bears nuts of excellent quality for the most part, but of rather small size and thick shell, excepting in individual plants. The common American hazel, while valuable for hybridizing purposes, will probably never be cultivated to any great extent, because of its habit of growth.

The characteristic life history in the Eastern States is as follows: A hazel plant bears a few nuts in its third year, a fairly large crop in its fourth year, a heavy crop in its fifth year, a very few nuts in its sixth year and it dies at the seventh or eighth year of age. Meanwhile, the plant has been sending out long stoloniferous roots which have surrounded the original plant with a chaplet of progeny, each one of which follows the life course of the parent.

One hazel plant when left free to its own devices may increase in this way rapidly enough to drive cows out of a pasture lot. I have trimmed off stoloniferous roots experimentally from a number of hazel plants, for the purpose of throwing all of the strength into the original stocks, hoping, thereby, to prolong their lives. This, however, appears not to be effective, as the stocks died at their appointed time.

Like many other wild plants, not yet subjected to processes of cultivation, the common American hazel does not respond very readily to cultivation, and too much attention on the part of the horticulturist leads it into confusion.

Some years ago I expended about six weeks in making a study of fruiting hazels and examined many thousands of bushes in Rhode Island, Connecticut and eastern New York state, including Long Island.

In the regions visited, the native hazels are so abundant as to be considered a pest. Out of all the bushes examined, I saved but three for purposes of propagation. The best one of these for size, quality and thinness of shell, I have named the Merribrooke, and young plants of this variety will be sent to any member of the Association who wishes to cultivate them. Bushes of this particular wild variety have had a reputation among the boys of the locality for more than a hundred years, according to legends of the neighborhood. I have recently budded specimens of this variety upon stocks of the Byzantine hazel, in the hope of prolonging the life of an individual plant beyond its normal seven or eight years.

The other American hazel, variously known as the beaked hazel, tailed hazel or horned hazel, was named _Corylus cornuta_ by Marshall (Arbustrum Americanum 37, 1785). Consequently, that is the name by which it should be known instead of the name _Corylus rostrata_ which was bestowed subsequently. This hazel has a much more northern range than the common American hazel and I have seen it in Labrador and in Ontario nearly to Hudson's Bay. On the Pacific coast it is said to reach a height of thirty feet. Although spreading by stoloniferous roots like the common American hazel, these roots are shorter, and it does not extend rapidly enough to dominate the situation when growing in competition with the common hazel.

The nuts, while very good, and sometimes of large size with comparatively thin shell, lack quality, a very important element in any nut. It is probable that this tailed hazel will be valuable for adding hardiness to hybrids with the European and Asiatic hazels, when the time comes for horticulturists of Canada to make fortunes from their hazel orchards.

In Europe and Asia and in the northern parts of Africa several species of hazels are extremely important commercially, sometimes furnishing the chief source of income for large districts, very much as wheat or corn make special crops over large areas in this country.

These foreign hazels have not been raised successfully in our country, excepting very recently on the northwest coast. The reason for failure depends almost wholly upon the presence of a blight, _Cryptosporella anomala_, which belongs to our native hazels. In the course of evolution, host and parasite have come to be peers of each other, and consequently this blight does not menace our native hazels very seriously. Introduced species, with the exception, perhaps, of the Byzantine hazel, appear to carry a protoplasm which has not learned to resist the attacks of the blight. All organic warfare is fundamentally enzymic in its nature, and it is possible that through process of natural selection some of the foreign hazels would eventually become securely established in this country, without aid from the nurseryman.

As a matter of fact, the hazel blight is very easily managed. Not knowing this at first, I allowed almost all of my exotic hazels to become destroyed, and a number of nurserymen told me of having given up the problem as hopeless. Recently I have learned of the ease with which the disease may be controlled, and now feel very comfortable in its presence.

The blight is of slow development and chooses the larger hazel stems for its battleground. All that one notices at first is a depression of the bark extending in the long axis of a large branch. If one observes more closely, he will find spore-bearing pustules occurring as little round elevations upon the depressed part of the bark. The blight proceeds slowly, and I pass about for examination specimens from two hazel limbs. In the smaller one the blight has been two years under way, and in the larger one three years. These patches of blight were allowed to grow experimentally. Meanwhile, I trimmed out all other blight areas of the bark with my jack-knife. This is very readily done. If one will look over his hazel bushes once a year and simply whip out the few slices of bark carrying the blight, it is done so easily and quickly that we now need to have no fear whatsoever for the future of hazel culture in this country.

If the members of the Association will examine these Cryptosporella specimens which are passed about, and if they will dispose of the blight according to directions, I feel that the hazel question involving a matter perhaps of millions of dollars worth of investment has been settled.

Among the foreign hazels which will thrive in this country the Byzantine hazel, _Corylus colurna_ is by all means the most beautiful. It makes a tree as large as the ordinary oaks, and in Hungary I have seen a trunk three feet in diameter at a short distance above the ground. I have been told that a single tree of this species will sometimes bear about twenty bushels of nuts at a single crop. This presumably refers to the nuts in their large involucral mass,--say four or five bushels of husked nuts. The wood of these species is hard, takes a high polish and is valuable. The tree itself is strikingly beautiful as the members will observe this afternoon when examining the Byzantine hazels which Superintendent Laney will show us in one of the Rochester parks.

This species of hazel in some of the localities about the Black Sea is said to form almost the entire source of income over large districts. The nuts are not large, as a rule averaging about like those of our common American hazel in size, quality and thinness of shell. Grafted or budded stocks may be made to bear large thin-shelled nuts. I am using this hazel at present for grafting stock for choice foreign species and varieties of other kinds, and for the American hazel, although it may be that the American hazel will not respond well to so large and vigorous a stock in the long run. Nuts and nursery stock may be obtained through French nursery firms.

The reason why the Byzantine hazel has not been planted widely in America as yet, is because we have not advanced that far in civilization,--people have not happened to think about it. We must leave something for the people who are to come five thousand years after us, and not think of all good things at once.

The Byzantine hazel appears to be quite free from the blight and this, perhaps, is due to its thick corky bark, which is in itself an attractive feature. In some individuals the corky bark stands out in ridges almost like that of the corky elm. The beauty of the European and Asiatic hazels, in general, makes them extremely desirable for ornamental purposes in parks and in dooryards.

One of the most attractive is the purple variety of _Corylus avellana_. In many parts of Europe this is held to be desirable for its nuts, but in Connecticut it is prone to flower so early in the season that the elongated male catkins are caught by frost. I have seen elongated catkins in a warm week at the end of February. A very desirable variety of _Corylus avellana_ is one of which I now show specimens. The section of the branch which I pass about carried four large nuts yesterday but I find that one of them has disappeared, and it is probable that last night in the sleeping car a squirrel got in when the porter was looking the other way.

The specimen represents a seedling individual among a lot presented to me by Prince Colloredo Mannsfeld of Bohemia nine years ago. This particular shrub is rather homely, with small unattractive leaves and big bony branches, but it bears heavily of large thin shelled hazels of the highest quality, and the sort which are now bringing fifty cents per pound in the New York market as green hazels. It blossoms very late in the spring. I have not as yet given a name to this individual bush, but as Professor J. Russell Smith caught my description of it and speaks of it as "the bony-bush" we will allow his nomenclature to stand if members of the Association wish to call for any of the wood for grafting or budding purposes. _Corylus avellana_ in its many varieties is the chief European hazel which gives us the cobnuts and filberts of the market, and it is the one which will probably be most widely introduced into this country. The name "filbert" is a corruption of "full beard" and is properly applied only to those nuts in which the husk extends beyond the nut. The shrubs of this species commonly reach a height of about fifteen to eighteen feet, with a spread of the same dimensions. Trimming by the horticulturist allows of the development of a larger bearing surface, very much as it does with peach or apple trees.

In some parts of Europe this species serves for hedge fences, indicating the practical ideas belonging to an older civilization. In this country we make hedge fences of worthless osage orange, privet, or honey locust which steal nourishment from the soil, add little to the beauty of the landscape, and give us no return whatsoever. Such a typical American way of doing things will be changed when we stop to think. Stopping to think is rather a painful process and gives us many jolts, but it has its rewards. When we replace our worthless hedge plants with hazels which yield heavy annual crops of valuable nuts we shall have made one step forward.

A fine hazel is the _Corylus pontica_. The shrub in itself has beauty, and it bears nuts sometimes as large as those of the average shagbark hickory. The kernel is of good quality, but the shell is so thick that these nuts are chiefly attractive to squirrels and to men who are out of work. I do not know the origin of the nut which is known in the market as the Barcelona hazel, but I imagine the plants bearing this nut are derived from the _Corylus pontica_. (Specimens of branches and nuts of various species and varieties of hazels are now passed about in the audience.) The nuts are beginning to ripen in this first week in September.

Hazels do not come true to parent variety from seed, and consequently valuable stock is propagated by budding, by grafting or by layering.

Personally, I find that the hazel is rather easily budded, although layering is the method for propagation of choice varieties most often employed in Europe. The hazels have comparatively few insect enemies, but mine are sometimes attacked destructively by the elm beetle and by the larvae of two species of saw flies which are also found upon the elms. It is a rather curious fact that the insects should recognize a similarity between the leaves of the hazels and of the elms, which are somewhat alike in general appearance, although the trees are of widely different descent.

It brings up an interesting question, if the flying parents of the parasites from the elm are attracted by the appearance of the hazel leaves, or if they are attracted by the odor or other characteristics. Occasionally the exotic hazels are attacked by various leaf blights but not to any troublesome extent so far as my experience goes, up to the present time. The chief predatory elements which we shall have to meet when raising hazels are squirrels, white-footed mice and the neighbors' children.

W. C. REED: May I ask, Doctor, what you bud the Byzantine on?

DR. MORRIS: I am budding other things on those for stocks. I bud our American hazels and European hazels on the European and Asiatic trees.

MR. RUSH: Do you know anything of the quality of that nut?

DR. MORRIS: It is the chief hazel in parts of northern Turkey, and of excellent quality. Hazels form a source of income for some localities like the wheat or corn in other parts of the world, or the olive, as Dr. Smith told us last night.

MR. HOLDEN: Do they get these trees from seedlings?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, so far as I know. The nuts are called Constantinople nuts.

A MEMBER: What kind is it that blooms in the fall?

DR. MORRIS: I don't know any but the witch hazel which blooms in the fall; has a small yellow flower, but is not a true hazel. Catkins form upon all hazels in the fall, but these do not really blossom until springtime.

A MEMBER: I would like to ask if the Byzantine hazel is attacked by blight as are the others?

DR. MORRIS: No; none of my trees have been attacked by blight at all as yet.

W. C. REED: What method of budding do you find most successful?

DR. MORRIS: I have usually used the ring budding. It is not very difficult.

PROFESSOR HEDRICK: Are there any East Asia hazels that thrive in this country?

DR. MORRIS: There are specimens in the park here at Rochester that you will see this afternoon.

PROFESSOR HEDRICK: Our experience with Asiatic hazels is very satisfactory.

MR. MCGLENNON: A friend of mine here has some specimens that he would like to present.

DR. SMITH: We will ask Mr. Vollertsen to describe the specimens himself.

MR. VOLLERTSEN: They are from a private place of G. H. Perkins on East Avenue. They have never failed a year since 1886. Unfortunately we have no name for them, except that this one was always called John Jones. It has certainly proved a good strong hardy variety.

Then we have another one, a long one, which has never been named, and I am not able to say exactly what it is. Last year they were exceptionally well filled. This year there are not quite so many on them, although a goodly number. They have never failed a single year.

I have one little variety which was given me by Dr. Mann, on Alexander Street. The limbs are practically hanging down with the nuts. They are ready for market now, falling out.

I have here some purple hazels which have always borne fruit and no other hazel in the vicinity is as good. It has sometimes two crops in a year. These are really beautiful specimens. This little early variety should be passed round and have special attention. I have given this variety no name, but for over thirty-five years it has borne good fruit every year.

DR. MORRIS: If you are in doubt as to the name of a variety, I think Mr. Laney will find a way for getting you the name for almost every variety that is found in the markets.

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. McGlennon asks that the gentleman advise us how he has propagated them. We went through Mr. McGlennon's beautiful orchard yesterday.

MR. VOLLERTSEN: We have been using an ordinary way of budding. An ordinary seedling can be used to good advantage for grafting. I have found in grafting in winter they do not seem to grow as well. In our fall layering we naturally get a larger plant.

THE PRESIDENT: Do we understand that these hazels that have borne for twenty-five years are European hazels?

MR. VOLLERTSEN: Yes; European hazels. I have had them under my care since 1886, and never noticed any blight.

A MEMBER: Can't you explain to us, with one of your specimens, your method of spring layering?

MR. VOLLERTSEN: In layering them, we practically don't cover them at all for the time being. They are merely pinned down.

DR. MORRIS: Do you cut the bark?

MR. VOLLERTSEN: Not on them. After they have grown some we cover them up. We find this a very successful way. We get younger and smaller plants in the fall lay.

THE PRESIDENT: I should like to ask Dr. Morris a question. In this native hazel, does it keep on spreading under ground?

DR. MORRIS: One single plant, planted in a pasture lot and not interfered with will in a few years occupy practically that whole pasture lot. In my part of the country this is true; how is it with you, Dr. Deming?

A MEMBER: Going back to the blight, will this tackle any size limb?

DR. MORRIS: It usually does not come until your hopes are at top notch, and then it drops in on you. It does not attack the smaller twigs at first, but may finally extend to them.

A MEMBER: Are any of your hybrids a success?

DR. MORRIS: There are none in bearing as yet. Byzantines are little, if any, larger than American hazel nuts, excepting from selected trees. Pontines are much larger. Both plants make a remarkably vigorous growth.

THE PRESIDENT: Do I understand that this Merribrooke hazel, put in the middle of an acre will fill the acre?

DR. MORRIS: I believe this is true. I don't think it is an exaggeration. The wild hazel is a nuisance in Connecticut.

THE SECRETARY: I know they will cover a very large space, but I cannot tell how they get there.

THE PRESIDENT: The point I am trying to get after is this, not the exact extent of spread but the method of propagation. Can we get a sprout from a good tree, and then have it go on sprouting indefinitely?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, that is true.

A MEMBER: In your experience are fungicides useful in handling the blight?

DR. MORRIS: I have not used them. I have talked with nurserymen who did, and they say the blight got the best of them just the same. They left the matter with employees, who did not give proper attention. This was perhaps because they did not know that a small jack-knife was better than a spraying outfit for the purpose.

A MEMBER: Once on, will it stay?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, until the blight area has circled the limb.

A MEMBER: What is the difference between the cobs and the filberts?

DR. MORRIS: The cob nut is generally a round nut. The filberts are longer nuts. "Filbert" is a corruption of "full beard," and refers to the involucre extending beyond the nut.

DR. SMITH: We may now proceed to the next number on the program, if the hunger for hazel knowledge abates. Members of this association have topworked pecans, hickories, etc. I followed the instructions of members of this association in my work and have had some success. Some workers report splendid success mixed with very great failures, so we may be encouraged to the very top notch, and the next spring we come back feeling very different. Last fall I was as large almost as a beer barrel with the gratification that followed the setting of 100 English walnut buds. I have adopted the motto "Blessed is he that rejoices early, or he may not rejoice at all." In March there were about ten or twelve alive. In June about nine were alive, and now these also have failed to grow. Last year I knew just how to bud walnuts. This last Fourth of July I was very humble.

For some reason or other we have not all the facts. We can propagate splendidly one year, and the next year we have a fall-down. Mr. Roper, of one of the pioneer nurseries, said he had 2,000 fine live walnut buds last fall, and had but 500 this spring, and not one of them grew. While the technique seems to be simple, there seems to be something lacking in our experience. I will ask Mr. Littlepage to give us his confessions first.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: The proposition of topworking is one of the schemes where art beats nature. In the fight in Congress over the oleomargarine bill some years ago, one member who favored it, said in support of his contention, that nature always beat art; and one of his opponents immediately referred him to a picture gallery near, where pictures of the statesmen were exhibited, as a proof that art sometimes beats nature. In top working, art improves upon nature.

The first thing to be considered is what is topworking, and then the logical question, why topworking. Possibly this should come first. If an individual is dissatisfied with his friends and neighbors, he must put up with them; he cannot change them. But if he is dissatisfied with a nut tree, it is his own fault if he does not change it. It can be top worked. He does not care to top work maples or oaks. We only top work to get something better than we have. The trees, of course, that interest us specially in top working are the nut trees. We have seedling pecans, seedling walnuts, seedling hickories, and seedling chestnuts. Down at the mouth of Green River in Kentucky are nearly two hundred acres of wild pecan trees. So far as we know there are only two trees in that orchard worthy of propagation. Of thousands of trees there we have propagated only two varieties. These trees are now too large to top work, but had it been possible 150 years ago to go in there and select the desirable nuts, and topwork all the other trees with these, there could have been a great orchard there now of the highest quality nuts.

Topworking consists in cutting off the top of some undesirable seedling and replacing it with scions or buds from some desirable variety. It is just the same as any other grafting or budding process. Almost any size tree can be topworked but, of course, the larger the tree the more difficult the operation. A young tree, from two to five inches in diameter, can be sawed off four or five feet above the ground and topworked by grafting from two to four scions on it, by the slip bark process. If the tree is larger than five inches in diameter, it is better to go up to the first branches, saw off part of them and proceed just as if each branch were itself a small tree. If the tree is a large tree, with a number of branches or prongs, it is best to work part of them one year and leave the remaining branches to maintain the root system. It would probably kill a large tree to cut the whole top off at one time. I have seen trees, two feet in diameter, successfully topworked. It sometimes happens that the scions placed in the tree, in the spring, for some reason or other, do not grow. The tree then sends up nice green shoots that later in the season can be budded into just as if they were small seedlings. The wild black walnut trees, growing around the fields and hills, can all be very easily topworked to the English walnut by the slip bark method. The scions must be dormant and the tree starting into active growth.

The wild hickory, wild pecan and wild black walnut trees, offer the best field for profitable work along this line. We have topworked a great many hickories to pecan, but we do not expect permanent satisfactory results. The experience of the pecan on the hickory is not very satisfactory. The hickory is a dense, hard wood, that has a short growing season, and matures its nuts early; the pecan is of the coarser, faster growing wood, whose nuts grow until late in the fall. This inconsistency of the growing habits of the two trees prevents the pecan top on the hickory from producing normal crops of nuts. The pecan topworked to the pecan, however, is a perfect success and there is no reason why the wild hickories of all descriptions cannot be successfully and profitably topworked to the better varieties of the good shagbark hickories. I believe that there are great opportunities in the state of New York for successful nut culture by utilizing the wild black walnut trees and the hickories. I have seen hundreds of English walnut trees growing around Rochester, some of them bearing perfectly wonderful crops of walnuts. I am surprised that the people in this section have not availed themselves more of the opportunities along this line. If the farmers in this section would take up nut growing as a side proposition and set five or ten acres of nut trees on each farm, they would soon find that these nut trees would be producing them more than all the balance of their farms. We hear a great deal today about the back to the farm movement, but my opinion is that for everyone who is going to the farm, ten are leaving it, and the reason for this is that the heavy operating expense of the annual crops, such as corn, wheat and potatoes, etc., lay such a heavy toll on the farmer that farming is not profitable. The requirements of time, labor and money in producing these crops are so great that it discourages many farmers. I have made the statement to some of the farmers in my part of the country that they must produce alfalfa or go broke. I believe that alfalfa and tree crops will be two of the greatest factors in the rehabilitation of the farm, especially the nut trees, for the reason that nut trees do not require the same high degree of care, spraying, pruning, as do apple and peach trees, nor are the products as perishable. A crop of nuts can be harvested and stacked up in barrels, and boxes, in the smoke house, the barn or in a flat car and go to the market tomorrow, next week or next month.

Recurring to the advantage of topworking, however, it meets the objection that is often raised by those who say they have not time to wait for the nut trees to grow. Of course, this is a perfectly foolish statement; they are going to wait anyhow; it is simply a question as to whether they wait for something or nothing, and trees grow into maturity in a surprisingly short time. A few years ago, when I was setting out an orchard of nut trees, a neighbor of mine came over and looked very doubtfully with a trace of pity in his expression and said, "When do you expect all those trees that you are setting to bear?" I replied, "I am not sure, but I do know that they will bear a long time before those trees that you are not setting." Topworking, however, gives quick results and enables one to take advantage of the long-established thrifty root systems of the wild black walnuts, hickories and pecans growing in economic spots, around the fences, corners, creeks and hillsides.

* * * * *

MR. JONES: In all our grafting we cut the cleft; we don't split it. The slip bark method is better in some cases.

MR. PRESIDENT: What is the size limit for the slip bark method?

MR. JONES: Anything less than two inches we would cut.

THE PRESIDENT: Will Mr. Jones tell us about budding with cold storage wood?

MR. JONES: The cold storage buds would take better, but you would have more loss in their failing to grow. In other words, a much larger percentage of buds set with the current season's growth, will grow in the following spring. I would not recommend either method alone. By grafting in the spring and then budding, first with cold storage and later with the season buds, you would have three chances.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you budded any cold storage wood before this year?

MR. JONES: We have done more or less of it for six or eight years, and it has been successful. Anyone with very little experience can use cold storage buds.

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. W. C. Reed, have you any additions that we ought to know?