se I would have kept in a submerged but hopeful condition
by occasionally cutting them down. This would keep them from crowding
the chestnut trees, but would by no means have kept me out of a stand of
vigorous pecans and black walnuts ready to graft at very short notice.
When the blight blew its signal of national alarm in 1908, I could have
gone to grafting those trees and they would by this time probably have
been in bearing and ready to replace the chestnuts which are now dying
with the blight.

If any one wishes to contradict my statement about these trees living
with such treatment, I will admit that I am not speaking from experience
with regard to the pecan, but I believe the experience of others
admirably verifies the statement I have made. I am, however, speaking
literally from my own experience when I refer to the black walnut. For
ten summers past I have in July and August scythed off a certain tract
of stump land planted to apples. Each year black walnuts and butter nuts
have been cut, and now at the end of that time the stubs are still
annually throwing up vigorous shoots 2-1/2 to 4 feet in length, and if
they are allowed to escape for a season, they dart past a man's head so
fast he wonders what has happened.

While I hope to experiment for forty more years on my mountain side in
the attempt to cover it with waving fruitful trees that are so immune to
pests as not to need spraying, I shall never again be caught with only
one possibility upon a given piece of land. If I should top-work my
native hickories to shagbark, which I know involves considerable waiting
and considerable uncertainty, I can, with very little expense, put upon
the same ground a full stand of grafted black walnuts and a full stand
of budded pecans, or if I do not care to go to that much trouble, I can
graft my hickories and plant my native black walnuts and merely keep
them there in submerged condition as reserve trees ready to be grafted
at any time. For a pecan orchard I can do exactly the same thing, using
black walnuts as fillers, possible successors, or as ungrafted reserves.
For the Persian walnut, the black walnut can again come in as a filler
or as a reserve, and for grafted blacks of any variety, other blacks can
be kept waiting for the arrival of possible better varieties which could
easily become the head of the corner.

My experience with transplanting seedling pecans shows that they, too,
can, without serious difficulty, be