therwise
protected in beetle infested zones. Filbert foliage may be destroyed by
these insects as many as three times in a summer and the trees die down
to the ground. The nuts are too small to be of value; but the wood is
white, very hard, and makes good turned articles.

+His Greatest Contribution+

It was with the filbert that Mr. Jones made his greatest contribution to
nut culture. In 1917 he tried crossing European varieties with pollen of
the native Rush. There were no results, and he tried again in 1918 with
no better luck. In 1919 he reversed the order of crossing and nearly
every nut set. He had discovered that native pollen was not effective on
European stigmas, but that the reciprocal cross worked. By 1924 he had a
fine lot of fruiting plants. The great majority were of no value, but
his No. 200 apparently was well worth while. It was named Bixby in 1937,
four years after another seedling, No. 91, had been named Buchanan. The
explanation of this belated selection is that the soil about the Bixby
tree had so eroded that the tree was starved for a time; but with a
couple of years of heavy application of stable manure, it came back, so
much so that it is now considered the better of the two. Both are rather
small as compared with the large filberts of the Pacific Northwest; but
when fully mature, they are sweet and agreeable.

After Mr. Jones was gone, the place was managed by his daughter, Miss
Mildred Jones. She kept plants of her father's filbert varieties and the
best of the crosses. The latter are now called the Mildred filberts, a
name applied in _Standardized Plant Names_ to the entire group of
crosses between Rush American and any European filbert. Mr. Jones hoped
to have these called after himself but there was an old variety of Jones
"hazel" and so his own name could not be used. He once sent specimens to
Dr. C. S. Sargent of Arnold Arboretum and somehow gained the impression
that the name Jones was given to the cross. Later, however, Sargent's
successor, Mr. Alfred Rehder wrote that Sargent had not used the name in
either correspondence or on specimens placed in the herbarium.

The example of Mr. Jones in breeding filberts has since been followed by
others, as the Department of Agriculture, the New York State
Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, and. Mr. Carl Weschcke of St.
Paul, Minnesota. The last has copyrighted his crosses under the
designation "hazilbert," which is a good name; but wi