Louis that so far we have been unable to graft that promises
to be adapted to this vicinity. It is good bearer, good cracker and
pleasant flavor. This class of nuts is adopted to the north where the
pecan is unsatisfactory.

The Hicans and Hickories

The hicans are numerous in this and adjacent counties. While a number of
them are good, I have located none that can compare favorably with
Bixby, Gerardi, and Pleas for this locality. The Pleas is a bitternut
hybrid and has some bitterness in the kernel, but no more than the
English walnut and people like it. Of the twenty hicans we have tried
the above three only are satisfactory.

In this latitude the hicans are unquestionably the most satisfactory nut
trees to plant. They grow fast, bear young, have a high flavor, crack
well and are unsurpassed as shade or lawn trees. Here the Gerardi and
Bixby are the best so far fruited. The Pleas is very ornamental but
lacks flavor. The Burlington and Fairbanks are adapted to the north but
here are not satisfactory bearers.

I have reports on about 25 Gerardi hican seedlings. They are all
worthless, smaller in nut than either pecans or hickories. The peculiar
thing is that some of the pecans are decidedly bitter in flavor as also
are some of the hickories. Two of the seedlings show shellbark blood.

=Handling the nut weevil and plum curculio.= Two years ago the few nuts
the Gerardi hican had were all wormy. Last spring I cultivated the
ground with a one-horse cultivator and gave our chickens free access to
the feast. They made so good a job of it that not a single nut was stung
this season. Where the ground can be flooded for several days this will
also exterminate the weevil. The same treatment applies to plum
curculio. Cultivation should be done before growth starts in spring, or
quite late in fall.

If anyone ever got a Pleas hybrid nut to grow I would appreciate ever so
much to hear from him. So far all my trials to germinate the nuts have
failed.

I may add that in my estimation no land on this globe is blessed with a
nut flora that equals that of the United States.

Nut Puttering in an Off Year

_By W. C. DEMING, Connecticut_

I did manage to get over to Avon Old Farms, the boys' school, and
topwork a few hickory trees. All grew, about a dozen, except three
scions of one kind that I put in one tree. This is the third year that I
have grafted hickories on the grounds of this school, some three
thousand acr