The meat industry and the milk supply are so closely related that both are influenced by the same causes. Both meat and milk are certain to become scarcer and more costly. And while it is most desirable that milk should continue to constitute a part of the human bill of fare and that its use should be encouraged and if possible increased, it is certain vegetable substitutes for both meat and milk will be increasingly in demand as pasture lands shrink in area and the world's population and consequent demand for food cereals increase.
It is certainly greatly to be desired that such efforts should be put forward to convince members of congress and of state legislatures of the importance of nut culture as will induce them to institute efficient measures for encouraging the wide spread culture of nut trees and thus make provision in time for the pressing need of the superfine material afforded by them which coming years will certainly develop, for it cannot be doubted that as the earth's population increases and as the science of nutrition is perfected, we shall return more and more to the dietary of primitive man, in which nuts were the chief staple, with fruits, succulent roots and tender shoots as supplementary foods for bulk, vitamines and food salts.
The Secretary-Treasurer: I have been asked to prepare a paper on the "Propagated Hickories." I have passed around a printed slip giving the results of tests of some hickory nuts which will be useful in connection with the paper.
PROPAGATED HICKORIES
Willard G. Bixby, Baldwin, Nassau Co., N, Y.
The title of this paper is a little misleading. In the nut contests the word "propagated" is restricted to those nuts which any nurseryman lists in his catalog and of which he is prepared to furnish grafted, budded or otherwise asexually multiplied trees. There are few hickories which are "propagated" in this sense and perhaps a better title would be "What We Know About the Hickories That Are Propagated Experimentally."
In a paper which Dr. Morris is to deliver he will tell us about top working hickory trees. This is a matter of great interest for top working existing trees is the method which at the present time promises to be the means of getting our first orchards of fine hickories in bearing condition.
The earliest instance of which we know anything of grafted hickories is that of the Elliot hickory owned by the late Whitney Eliot, of North Haven, Conn. This was awarded a prize offered by the late A. J. Coe of. Meriden Conn., for the best hickory nut exhibited at the December meeting of the Connecticut Agricultural Society in 1892. According to the Bulletin of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture on "Nut Culture in the U. S.," 1896, this was the product of a grafted tree. I have never seen a specimen of the nut although I understand that the tree is still standing. I have been unable to get any definite information as to when the grafting was done, methods used, etc.