have but one person
work on it. But the thing that has caused the greater part of the delay
was the wide variation between the results in the tests of those nuts
which were sent into both the 1918 and 1919 contests, and my
unwillingness to have these results appear in print until the reasons
for these discrepancies could be stated with certainty.

Had the methods used been those in use for some time and whose
correctness had been proven, these differences would have caused little
concern, but inasmuch as the methods for measuring most of the nut
characteristics were used for the first time in 1918, and their had been
devised by me, I could not help feeling that there was a possibility of
the discrepancies being due to imperfections in methods for, at first,
it would seem likely that nuts borne by a given tree one year would be
like those borne the next year. I considered therefore that it was for
me to prove beyond question that the methods used were sound and that
the differences noted were real. The amount of time needed to do this at
a period when my time was well occupied with other things has been more
than I wish it had been. While many efforts were made to see if there
were imperfections in the methods used for measuring the various
characteristics, no such imperfections were found, and, for a
considerable period, all efforts made to explain the differences in
tests made on nuts borne by the same trees in different years were
unproductive of results. Finally the matter was settled to my
satisfaction as is noted in the next paragraph.

The Clark hickory received 79 points last year when it took the first
prize. It tested out 11 points less this year when first tested which
put it entirely out of the prize winning class. Repetition of this
year's tests gave results agreeing fairly well with the first ones made
but still not all comparable to those of last year. This was decidedly
disconcerting when one of the principal results expected of the adoption
of methods of measuring nut characteristics was the possibility of
testing a given nut now and several months hence and obtaining the same
verdict. After much work designed to see if the methods of measuring nut
characteristics were faulty and nothing wrong had been found with them,
a visit was made to the tree. Mr. Clark said that it bore a good crop
every other year and but few nuts in the intervening years, and that the
nuts were much better the years when a good