of the tree
and this may be left on only during the time when squirrels are likely
to ascend the tree. They will begin long before the nuts are ripe. In
the case of hazel nuts, I have surrounded the bushes with a wire fence
or wire mesh, leaving a little opening on one side, and have placed
steel traps in the opening. Now here enters a danger which one does not
learn about excepting from practical experience. I went out one morning
shortly after having thought of this bright idea and found two gray
squirrels in the traps. They had followed their natural instinct of
climbing when they got into the steel traps, and climbing wildly had
broken off every single branch from those hazels which carried
hybridized nuts. There wasn't one left, because the squirrels when
caught had climbed into the trees and had so violently torn about with
trap and chain that they had broken off every single branch with a nut
on it. So many things happen in our experiments that appeal to one's
sense of the ludicrous, if he has a sense of humor, that I assure you
nut raising is a source of great delight to those who are fond of the
drama.

The field of hybridizing nut trees offers enormous prospects. We are
only just upon the margin of this field, just beginning to look into the
vista. It has been done only in a limited way, so far, by crossing
pollen and flowers under quite normal conditions. We may look forward to
extending the range now of pollinization from knowledge based upon the
experiments of Loeb and his followers in biology. They have succeeded in
developing embryos from the eggs of the sea urchin, of the nereis, and
of mollusks, without spermatozoa. Their work has shown that each egg is
a single cell with a cell membrane and it is only necessary to destroy
this cell membrane according to a definite plan to start that egg to
growing. Life may be started from the egg in certain species without the
presence of the other sex. This may lead us into a tremendous new field
in our horticultural work. We may be able to treat germ cells with acids
or other substances which destroy the cell membrane so as to allow
crossing between very widely separated species and genera. Loeb, by
destroying the cell membrane of the sea urchin, was enabled to cross the
sea urchin with the star fish, and no one knows but we may be able,
following this line of experimentation, eventually to cross the shagbark
hickory with a pumpkin and get a shagbark hickory nut ha