ntlemen, but there is truth in that. For good nuts
there is often need for a little extra manure or fertilizer, or perhaps
both. Sometimes there are rich pockets in the earth where those trees
would like to grow, or rich bottom lands which will produce without
manure. I think one of the best ways is to fertilize with manure, if
possible. Pollination troubles in connection with the non-filling and
dropping of the nuts should be thought of.

Then there is another angle to be considered, and perhaps I can express
it most definitely to you by citing the example of the June drop of
peaches. Whenever a tree, like the peach tree or the pecan or the black
walnut, sets its fruit in the spring, you will find that there are
cross-pollinated and self-pollinated fruits. These will begin to drop
their nuts or their fruit at definite stages. Furthermore we will find
the abortive seeds are not one size. This means that there were definite
stages of the pollination and of the fertilization. I should like to
work that up and find what the stages are.

The last big step in the dropping of the peach tree is the shedding of
the fruit just as the pits are hardening. When they are hard the fruit
does not fall. So this June-drop question ties in with the complications
of pollination and nutrition. We know from experiments on the sterility
of the pear tree, if highly fed and cultivated, such as those I worked
on in the city of Rochester, that those highly fed trees will have some
self-fertilized pears. In all of the pears we got no pears resulted when
pollinized with the pollen of the same variety, except on those well fed
trees. We learned this in the East, and have since found the same type
of self-fertilized pear occurring naturally in California and other
places in the West. In nut production that whole question of setting and
filling is tied up in a complicated way with pollination and nutrition.

Aside from nutrition the other thing to be considered is that of
disease. The common black walnut around Washington is generally poor
from fungus leaf diseases. Those of us familiar with it around here know
that they do not fruit well. This is not a good place for the common
black walnut. The wild ones are nearly all poor. I was raised in the
Mississippi Valley, where there were large nuts and fine ones, and we
gathered those which fell from the specially good trees. They do not
grow so well here, except the Stabler and a few others.

Leaving