They lived through the winter, the summer, and the next winter,
but in the spring, following a few warm days and a freeze, the bark of
every one of those common stocks exploded, fairly, and the entire lot
was lost, not one tree lived.

A great many trees that I brought from farther south, from California
and from the Pacific coast, all died. I learned then that the climate
there will allow trees from western Europe to grow because they have the
Japanese current furnishing similar conditions of climate; that trees
from that part of the country would be mostly failures here in the East;
and that trees for the East should come from northeast Asia where
climatic conditions are similar.

I learned also that trees from a distance, not accustomed to our soil
and climate, would not adapt themselves readily, and it would require
long selection and breeding to acclimatize or adapt to our soil trees
which were developed under differing conditions. Out of a large lot of
things that I got from Chili, hoping that their altitude would
correspond to our latitude, nothing grew. Consequently by elimination of
things that would not live I gradually arrived at the conclusion that it
is best for any locality to develop the species, or a like kind of tree,
which belong to that locality. Well, they say, how about the prairies
that are treeless? Of course we have there to deal with a question of
fire that from time immemorial has swept the prairies covered with grass
and has been halted only when it reached the regions of established
forests; so that on the prairies I have no doubt we may have great
groves of nut trees flourishing. In my locality the trees that are
indigenous are the ones which do the best, and that is the line for
perseverance.

Then I took up hybridization. I found there were many disappointments.
It was difficult to be sure of securing reliable pollen and of getting
it to the flowers at the right time and surely, so that we would have
good hybrids instead of parthenogens which sometimes develop as the
result of the female not making fusion with its mate.

On one occasion I remember I covered a lot of branches with large bags
for pollenization, and going out a few days later to add pollen I found
a wren's nest with two eggs in one of my bags. Now if a wren could lay
two eggs in one of those bags the cross-pollenization was not likely to
be a success. In this work, however, I find that we have a tremendous
field opened up