bushes and fruit and
what the second generation may bring forth is yet to be determined.
Established hazel plants endured the extreme heat and drought
splendidly, but newly planted bushes did not. Well-rooted layers and
divisions planted out early made a splendid start, then backed up and
were a total failure before the July rains came.

That you may know how dry it was in Iowa the first six months of 1934,
let me tell you that only about two-thirds of the oats sown in April in
well prepared soil got moisture enough to germinate then, and about the
same part of the corn planted in May germinated. Well, along in June a
shower furnished enough moisture to germinate the remaining part, so we
had corn 2 to 3 feet high and in adjacent hills only 2 or 3 inches high,
and oats which were headed out mixed with others of the same sowing
which were just up.

The walnuts endured these extremely dry conditions better than any fruit
or nut bearing trees. Young seedlings made quite a satisfactory growth
and year old seedlings lined out for future grafting made almost a
perfect stand, as did the grafted trees which were unsold and lined out
at the end of the selling season. The heavy loss in walnuts was in the
grafts set in May. This will be mentioned later.

The shortage of moisture in 1933 apparently was responsible for
considerable winter killing of young hickories which were in sod. There
was no loss in cultivated ground. The hickories were like the apples
this year in that they did not bloom much, and unlike them in that the
apples ripened ahead of their normal season, while the hickories ripened
later. Stratford nuts are usually ready to gather September 1 but this
year are still clinging to the trees. Fairbanks is our most prolific
kind. Nuts closely resembling Fairbanks, yet somewhat different from it,
keep bobbing up on different sides of us when there is a good crop of
hickory nuts. None of them have yet been superior to Fairbanks. Perhaps
one should give each a good testing and keep up a search for one with
better quality than Fairbanks. Certainly there is no reason for calling
Stratford a hybrid. It is one of a group of shagbarks with smaller
leaves and buds, and thinner husks than are found in what we would call
a typical shagbark. The shagbarks might be divided into several species
and be as distinct as some of the species of other trees, such as the
ash for example. Vest and Hand represent another group with thin, wav