ne reason for his success is that he is a violin maker with a
record of perhaps fifty violins, violas and 'cellos, and he makes his
own tools. He is a modest man whom it is a privilege to know.

I have had some interesting experiences with papaws this year. For the
first time I have succeeded in growing the seed intentionally. The only
other time when I have had seedlings was when a bunch of them came up by
themselves in the yard as thick as hair on a dog. Last year (1942) in
the fall, I scattered a lot oL seed in a perennial bed and poked them in
with a cane and also in a reentrant angle of a house looking to the
northeast, behind some rather luxuriant Christmas roses (helleborus
niger) where there wore also lilies-of-the-valley and
jack-in-the-pulpits and the soil had been rather heavily enriched. In
both places the papaws came up quite freely, especially in the angle of
the house where the sun struck only a short time each day. The chief
reason, however, was probably the rich, deep soil. These seedlings with
taproots 6 to 8 inches long were easily transplanted with their leaves
on. I brought four of them to St. Petersburg, Florida. They are said to
be native in upper Florida.

Dr. Zimmerman, who was our authority on papaws, said that he thought
hand pollination was necessary for good crops. I have been making
observations on this for several years and in 1942 obtained confirmatory
results. Last spring (1943) I hand-pollinated a tree about 18 feet high
using pollen from a number of other trees. This was the same tree on
which I had had good results in 1942 over the limited part of the tree
that I had been able to reach from the ground. This year I used a
stepladder. Also, because the tree was close to a tool house, on the
grounds of the park superintendent, I was able to reach the top of the
tree from the roof of the tool house. From this tree I gathered about
100 fruits, all but two perfect, weighing together 23 pounds. There were
several bunches of three and four and one of six. The quality I did not
think as good as some. But it seemed a pretty good demonstration of the
value of hand pollinating.

In the yard of a house in Hartford, belonging to the widow of a high
school classmate of mine, I found a number of papaw trees, some of them
as big as they often grow, perhaps forty feet high and up to a foot in
diameter. The lady told me that they used to bear abundantly when her
neighbor just over the fence kept bees.