reater
territory is found to be of only fair size.

The usual way one will describe the size of a pecan is to say it is as
large as his thumb and about two thirds the length of his forefinger,
and so thin shelled that two of them can easily be cracked in the hand
with only a light pressure.

I usually carry some sample nuts of the named varieties on these trips
for comparison and it is seldom that the owner or informer of a tree
believes any of these to be larger than those produced by his favorite
tree until a comparison is made, and then he will often declare they are
not as large this season as usual.

This brings to mind many incidents which are very clear in my memory,
one especially, when Mr. McCoy and myself had heard of the Kentucky
pecan tree which is opposite Grandview, Ind. We went to Grandview to get
first hand information on this tree from one who had gathered the nuts
from it and while talking to the party he was trying to tell us how
large the nut was. I first took a Busseron pecan from my pocket and he
said it was much larger than that. I then resorted to some large
southern ones none of which he thought were as large as his favorite. At
last I produced a McAllister. After some hesitation he admitted it was
larger than the Kentucky. At this Mr. McCoy gave a hearty laugh and told
him his imagination had the better of his judgment. Almost every one who
owns any number of nut trees has one that is better than the rest, and
naturally he prizes this one highly and wishes it propagated. I have
traveled many hundreds of miles going to trees on reports of others,
only to be disappointed. Where the tree is found to be promising and no
bearing record is obtainable, then an annual trip for several years is
necessary to determine the bearing record. These trips require time,
expense and labor for very often a part of the trip has to be made on
foot.

Several years ago Claude Luckado, a professional pecan gatherer of
Rockport, spent several weeks one fall in a large pecan grove on the
Wabash river and brought back several samples of very promising pecans,
one especially that I considered very worthy of further consideration. I
reported this one to Mr. C. A. Reed, and a year or two later, when on a
trip through this section in the fall, he suggested a trip to this tree.
I arranged with Mr. Luckado to go with us to show us this tree, which is
about seventy miles from Rockport. We left there on the first traction
c