able substitute for a patch bud cutter. It seems to do very well. The
patches are small, but as an aid in tieing them in I prepared short
strips of painter's masking tape with a thin coat of a plastic grafting
wax on one side. In the center of each piece of tape is a hole just
large enough for the bud to show through. The tape is pressed on over
the bud patch, after which the usual binding with rubber strips is
applied.

The whole technic of budding is fascinating and I plan to experiment as
extensively next season as time and stock permit.

Wax and Tape

In 1937, Shear[2] published a report on a number of wound dressings for
trees in which he observed that lanolin exerts a marked action in
stimulating cambial growth. This led me to try various wax combinations
in which lanolin was incorporated, and a mixture of equal parts of
lanolin and beeswax has become the base for most of my experimental
grafting wax mixtures. I have commented already on the importance of
incorporating an opaque ingredient to exclude light. Experiments in
progress this season have had to do with introduction of green vs. red
dye and with the incorporation of a wax soluble pyrridyl mercuric
stearate[3] as a fungicide.

I have recommended painter's masking tape for tying in scions in all
cases in which moderate tension is sufficient. A winding of such a tape
of course excludes the grafting wax from contact with the line of
cambial contact, so any favorable action which any ingredient in the wax
might have must be largely interfered with. If a tape is prepared with a
thin coating of plastic grafting wax on one side to serve as the
adhesive, it should be possible to bring the wax into contact with the
cut cambial surface without, however, introducing such a mass of wax as
would make its way between stock and scion and interfere with contact.

Nutrition

My own field of work has recently changed to nutrition, infant feeding,
and I shall undoubtedly come to have more of an understanding of plant
nutrition as well as of babies as I study longer on this subject.

Our recollections of the "good old days" are often mistaken, but I think
there is no doubt that the nut trees bore more and better nuts when I
was a boy than we can find now. Can it be a matter of nutritional
failure?

The first consideration in plant nutrition seems to be the water supply,
and perhaps in many localities the water table has fallen sufficiently
to threaten our trees