t we had everything in such readiness that there
would be nothing to delay the shipment when it arrived. How wrong I was!

Although Rev. Crath had written me that the shipment had been sent on a
certain Polish steamer, I learned of its arrival only from a letter I
received from the importing company, which requested that the original
bill of lading and invoice be sent to them at once, as the shipment had
already been in the harbor for a week but could not be released by the
customs office until they had these documents. I had received the bill
of lading from Rev. Crath but not the invoice, for he had not known that
I would need it. So my valuable, but perishable, shipment remained in
port storage day after day while I frantically sought for some way to
break through the "red tape" holding it there. Cables to Rev. Crath were
undeliverable as he was back in the mountains seeking more material. In
desperation, I wrote to Clarence A. Reed, an old friend, member of the
Northern Nut Growers' Association and in charge of government nut
investigations in the Division of Pomology at Washington. Through his
efforts and under heavy bond pending receipt of the invoice, the walnut
and filbert material was released and sent to Washington, D. C. As there
was too much of it to be inspected through the usual facilities for this
work, it was necessary to employ a firm of seed and plant importers to
do the necessary inspecting and fumigating. At last, terminating my
concern and distress over the condition in which the trees and scions
would be after such great delays and so many repackings, the shipment
arrived in St. Paul. There remained only the requirement of getting
permission from the Bureau of Plant Inspection of the State of Minnesota
to take it to Wisconsin, where, if there was anything left, I intended
to plant it. This permission being readily granted, we managed, by truck
and, finally, by sled, to get it to the nursery about the middle of the
winter.

The following spring, we planted the nuts and trees and grafted the
scions on black walnut and butternut stocks. The mortality of these
grafts was the greatest I have ever known. Of about four thousand
English walnut grafts, representing some twenty varieties, only one
hundred twenty-five took well enough to produce a good union with the
stock and to grow. Some of them grew too fast and in spite of my
precautions, were blown out; others died from winter injury the first
year. By