Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting | Page 9

given tree, taking
pains to destroy all nuts which contain weevil larvae. These may be
selected in a general way by dumping the freshly gathered nuts into a
tub of water. Nuts containing weevil larvae will float for the most part,
and in order to make sure of the destruction of larvae in the remaining
nuts they may be placed in a closed receptacle, and carbon bisulphide
poured over them.
One of the bud worms is sometimes very destructive to individual

hickory trees which have developed colonies, the larvae destroying the
axillary buds, and burrowing into the base of the petioles of leaves.
A new enemy which I found this year for the first time is the
Conotrachelus juglandis. This beetle ordinarily lays its eggs in the
involucre of the butternut. With the introduction of exotic walnuts, the
beetle has changed its habits, and lays its eggs in the herbaceous shoots
of walnuts and hickories. The larvae tunnel into the center of a shoot,
and destroy it, or seriously interfere with its nutrition.
Among the enemies of the hickory we must not forget the common
field mouse, and the pine mouse, which burrow beneath the surface of
the ground, and in winter feed freely upon the bark of the roots of the
hickories. They have destroyed many thousands of young hickories of
various kinds in my nursery, and in digging up roots of old hickories
for experimental root grafting I find that mice have been living freely
for years upon the bark of some roots.
RANDOM NOTES
Aside from the facts which have been grouped together in this paper,
certain notes may be of interest, as introducing questions for
speculation.
Are we likely to find more species among the hickories than the ones
already described? If so well described a species as the H. Buckleyi has
almost escaped observation, and if H. Mexicana is confined, as it seems
to be, to a very limited area, and if most of the hickories grow in
regions where few botanists are at work, it seems to me probable that
several species remain as yet undiscovered. These are likely to be
species which lack means of defence, and which are restricted to
certain small areas. If we make a parallel with other observations of
recent discoveries, one thinks, for instance, in Ichthyology of the
Marston's trout, the Sunapee sabling, Ausable greyling, and the Kern
River trout, confined almost to a certain stream or lake, and remaining
undiscovered for years by naturalists, although familiar to thousands of
local fishermen.

Sometimes there is a very apparent reason for the check to distribution
of a species. The men whom I employed to go into the mountains of
Alvarez for the Mexican hickory tell me that the trees are so loaded
down with mistletoe that they rarely bear a crop, and there are few nuts
with well developed kernels to be found.
Distribution of a powerful species of hickory, like the pecan, seems to
be limited in the North by incomplete development of the pistillate
flowers. These are borne on the ends of the herbaceous shoots of the
year, and the pecan has such a long growing season that in the North
the pistillate buds, which are last developed, are exposed to winter
killing. Southern limitation of hickories which have a very short
growing period, like the shagbark, may be due to the fact that after a
period of summer rest, new growth begins in the autumn rains, and this
new growth may not lignify for winter rest.
By artificial selection we can extend the range of all hickories far
beyond their indigenous range, which is limited by natural checks.
Extension of range, adaptation to various soils, and changes in the
character of the nut are likely to occur from grafting hickories upon
different stocks of the family. Thus we can graft a shagbark, which
does not thrive in poor sandy soil, upon the mocker-nut, which does
grow in such soils. Some varieties of the species may grow freely far
out of their natural range if they are simply transplanted. For instance,
the Stuart pecan, which comes from the very shores of the Gulf of
Mexico, is one of the hardiest pecans at the latitude of New York. I
don't know about its northern fruiting as yet.
If the Satsuma orange grafted upon trifoliate orange stock gives a heavy,
well flavored fruit, while the same variety grafted upon sweet orange
stock gives a spongy fruit of little value, we may assume that similar
changes in character of fruit will follow nut grafting. Perhaps the
astringent feature of the pecan nut will be found to disappear when the
pecan has been grafted upon certain other hickories. Sometimes
undesirable results are obtained from such grafting; for instance, the
pecan grafted upon water