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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
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