Professor Craig: I am not very optimistic about the possibility of that. I find it very, very difficult to get roots to develop from Hicoria. You can get the callus almost every time, but it is very difficult to secure the development of roots afterwards.
President Morris: How about getting callus by three months, we will say, in storage?
Professor Craig: We would have the same trouble. They would develop adventitious buds very poorly. Doctor Morris has sent us from time to time some samples, and we have been making experiments. I have used different methods and different propagators. We have one propagator, who has been most successful usually in striking difficult things, and he has absolutely failed in this one. I may say that our facilities for propagation are not ideal at the present time, but we shall have in a short time a good propagating house with properly regulated benches, as to bottom heat and overhead ventilation and all that; and we shall, of course, keep up the experiments.
President Morris: In my experiments, I grafted hickory scions on hickory roots, and the whole thing, root and scion, lived until the root sent out adventitious buds, yet in that case we did not get union between the top and the stock. How do you explain that, Professor Craig?
Professor Craig: I don't explain it.
President Morris: Are we likely to have success along that line by some modification of the plan?
Professor Craig: I couldn't say. You can keep the cuttings alive for three or four months.
President Morris: They were in damp rooms, exposed to light, right in the window.
Doctor Deming: Professor Coville has made some experiments in rooting hickory cuttings for me. Professor Coville is the one who has made such a success of blueberry culture. I sent him some cuttings, and he reports as follows:
"Two experiments were tried with the hickory cuttings received from Dr. W. C. Deming on January 5, 1911. In one experiment some of the cuttings were placed in a glass cutting bed in live sphagnum covered with sand, the upper ends of the cuttings projecting from the sand. The atmosphere above the cutting bed was kept in a state of saturation by a covering of glass. The bed was kept shaded and was subjected to an ordinary living room temperature varying from about 55° to 70°, or occasionally a few degrees higher.