Stocks: The varying rapidity of growth of trees of the same variety has been noticeable and has caused more than passing notice for one can not help thinking that such varying rapidity of growth would be likely to cause equal variations in bearing. It would seem as if this must be caused by the variations in the stocks for the scions all come from the same tree. Inspection of seedling trees has shown that some grow much faster than others. If normal growth trees are considered, trees making less than half this are numerous and those making double are rather rare. Apparently we have in seedling stocks enough variations in vigor of growth to account for the variations in growth noticed in grafted trees of the same variety. Mr. Jones tells me that he expects to discard nearly 50% of his seedlings because not vigorous enough to bud or graft. Then there are some trees which seem incapable of taking grafts or buds. It would seem very desirable to select rapid growing stocks that will take buds and grafts readily and use those but this will mean working out means of propagating them by cuttings, layers, or some asexual method and these have not been well worked for nut trees, other than hazels, although some work has been done on it.
The above conclusions are largely from the limited observations I have made on my small place. None are very new for I believe I have heard all of them advanced before, but observing them myself has fixed them in my mind in a way that they could not have been otherwise. Many of them have been corroborated by others. For example, Mr. Jones has shown me walnut trees of the same size set out at the same time, some severely pruned and others not, where the severely pruned ones in two or three years had so far outstripped the others as to make it very noticeable and it seemed as if the difference in vigor would continue. On the other hand it is possible that there may be points where the experience of others differs from mine.
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THE PRESIDENT: There is one more address this morning. That is by Doctor
Morris, the subject being, "Pioneer Experience and Outlook."
DOCTOR MORRIS: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:
Lord Byron said that the reason why he did not commit suicide was because he was so curious to know what was going to happen next. For any one to do pioneer work in almost any department of human activity there are two essentials: First, he must be more or less stupid and not read the handwriting on the wall; and in the second place he must be very obstinate and persistent. Given those qualities one may succeed in pioneer work in almost any department of life.
Something over twenty years ago I had the idea of putting upon my country place every kind of American tree that could be grown there. I planned to occupy a little time away from professional work and attend to this. As I began to acquire information the subject grew so rapidly that I found it would be necessary to give up my profession wholly and employ several assistants in order to carry out this idea. Consequently I cut down my ambition to include only coniferous and nut trees. This study in turn grew so rapidly that I found it necessary to cut out everything except nut trees, and then I found that one might devote his entire life to the subject of hickories alone to the exclusion of all other occupation.
In the beginning of the development of my nut trees there were failures continually and it became interesting. Lord Byron found it interesting to live in order to see what was going to happen next. My failures were so interesting that I was very curious to know what was going to happen next. I started in with a very large lot of shagbark hickory trees. I had them grafted for me in the South. I think I expended something like $250 for that lot. I had it grafted upon the common hickory stock of the South. 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.