yet fourteen years of age. His net profit beyond all
expenses was thirty thousand dollars that year. There are probably very
few professional men who make more than that a year. Many men are making
good, comfortable incomes out of their nut orchards. It is the best
insurance against the needs of old age, the best sort of life insurance.
VOICE: Do you use anything besides the hickory as stock for
grafting on?
DR. MORRIS: Yes, we have some experimenting to do in order to
learn which stock will best serve for a certain variety. We find that
one species or variety of hickory will accept other varieties of that
species well, but perhaps it will not accept another species. We do know
that certain kinds do remarkably well on certain stocks; but the entire
range of that subject has not as yet been worked out.
QUESTION: Does the stock you graft on have any effect on the
quality of the fruit?
DR. MORRIS: The stock on which you graft is supposed to have no
effect at all on the quality of the fruit. But there are some
exceptions. We learned that in orange grafting. A naval orange grafted
on the wild orange stock might be raggy, not full of juice; while when
grafted on the trifoliate orange stock might be heavy and full of juice.
So in that case the stock did have some influence upon the graft; and
there are other instances. But as a rule we assume that the stock has no
influence upon the graft in regard to the validity of character.
QUESTION: Are pecans a variety of hickory?
DR. MORRIS: Yes, pecans are hickories. The Indians gave it the
name of pekan. The French spelled it pecanne, so that has been spelled
as the pecan, without the necessary other part of its name, hickory. We
should always say pecan hickory--always.
DR. KELLOGG: Dr. Morris, how old hickories may be used for
grafting?
DR. MORRIS: I have experimented with trees up to fifty years of
age; but the most satisfactory work, perhaps, is done with trees that
are not more than fifteen or twenty years of age and three or four or
five inches in diameter. Those are the best trees to work with. If we
cut off the limbs of a very old tree and try to top work it, it means an
enormous amount of work on the part of the orchardist, more work than my
employees like to give it. But one may topwork a tree of almost any age,
preferably a tree less than twenty-five years of age; and by choice I
should say trees not more than ten years of age. We have experts in the
audien
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