for years by naturalists, although familiar to thousands of local
fishermen.

Sometimes there is a very apparent reason for the check to distribution
of a species. The men whom I employed to go into the mountains of
Alvarez for the Mexican hickory tell me that the trees are so loaded
down with mistletoe that they rarely bear a crop, and there are few nuts
with well developed kernels to be found.

Distribution of a powerful species of hickory, like the pecan, seems to
be limited in the North by incomplete development of the pistillate
flowers. These are borne on the ends of the herbaceous shoots of the
year, and the pecan has such a long growing season that in the North the
pistillate buds, which are last developed, are exposed to winter
killing. Southern limitation of hickories which have a very short
growing period, like the shagbark, may be due to the fact that after a
period of summer rest, new growth begins in the autumn rains, and this
new growth may not lignify for winter rest.

By artificial selection we can extend the range of all hickories far
beyond their indigenous range, which is limited by natural checks.
Extension of range, adaptation to various soils, and changes in the
character of the nut are likely to occur from grafting hickories upon
different stocks of the family. Thus we can graft a shagbark, which does
not thrive in poor sandy soil, upon the mocker-nut, which does grow in
such soils. Some varieties of the species may grow freely far out of
their natural range if they are simply transplanted. For instance, the
Stuart pecan, which comes from the very shores of the Gulf of Mexico, is
one of the hardiest pecans at the latitude of New York. I don't know
about its northern fruiting as yet.

If the Satsuma orange grafted upon trifoliate orange stock gives a
heavy, well flavored fruit, while the same variety grafted upon sweet
orange stock gives a spongy fruit of little value, we may assume that
similar changes in character of fruit will follow nut grafting. Perhaps
the astringent feature of the pecan nut will be found to disappear when
the pecan has been grafted upon certain other hickories. Sometimes
undesirable results are obtained from such grafting; for instance, the
pecan grafted upon water hickory stock has been found to grow freely for
four or five years, and then to die back unaccountably.

Stocks of rapidly growing hickories, like the pecan and the bitternut,
may serve to shorten the beari