are quite as intelligent
as squirrels in some respects. Here and there attempts were made at
propagating fine hickory trees of various species by planting nuts. It
was not generally known at that time that the hickories were so
thoroughly crossed like the apples, that they would not reproduce true
to type from seed. Attempts were then made at grafting which were mostly
failures for many years. We are now on the verge of a great development
in hybridization or crossing of choice kinds of hickories and in
determining upon which stocks the different kinds of selected hickories
may be grown to best advantage. Hybrids between varieties of hickories
occur frequently in nature and hybrids between species of hickories
occur occasionally. A number of these accidental hybrids have been
discovered and some of them are now being propagated. For the most part
they do not represent the best quality of the best parent but it is a
notable fact that the bitterness of kinds with the bitter pellicle
appears to be a recessive character and disappears usually from hybrids
between species in which one parent has a bitter nut. Unfortunately, the
finer extractive which give character to the nut of the better parent
are prone to disappear also. This is in line with our experience in
mixing of characters along Mendelian lines. Given a sufficient number of
hybrids and we shall have here and there one with spectacular
characteristics of special value.

Now that horticulturists at the present moment are turning so freely
toward the idea of producing quantities of hybrids artificially, the
next generation will see hickory nuts which were not dreamed of in the
days when I was a boy. The crossing of hickories is not difficult work.
We simply remove the male flowers from branches carrying female flowers
before the male flowers have begun to shed their pollen. The female
flowers are then covered with oiled paper bags tied over them for
protection and when the danger from self pollination has passed, we take
off the bags and add a little pollen which we have kept for the
purpose--pollen from some trees bearing remarkably valuable nuts.

Nuts resulting from this cross pollination when planted, give us new
varieties of trees which never have been seen before by anybody and that
is so interesting that very many people will probably take up
hybridization as an incident in recreation. Some of the hybrids will
bear very early in their history and others very