were being treated.  Deer mice, too, I found, have a habit of climbing the stems of hazel bushes and gnawing at the nuts long before they are mature enough to use for seed.  Later I learned to protect hybrid nuts by lacing flat pieces of window screening over each branch, thus making a mouse-proof enclosure.  Even after gathering the nuts I discovered that precautions were necessary to prevent rodents from reaching them.  The best way I found to do this is to plant nuts in cages of galvanized hardware cloth of 2 by 2 mesh, countersunk in the ground one foot and covered completely by a frame of the same material reinforced with boards and laths.

The most interesting hazilbert that has developed bears nuts of outstanding size, typically filberts in every detail of appearance, although the plant itself looks more like a hazel, being bushy and having many suckers.  After more testing, this hybrid may prove to be a definite asset to nursery culture in our cold northern climate, fulfilling as it does, all the requirements for such a plant.  The second hazilbert resembles the first closely except that its nuts, which are also large, are shaped like those of Corylus Americana.  The third hazilbert has smaller nuts but its shell is much thinner than that of either of the others.

In reference to the hazilberts, I am reminded of certain correspondence I once had with J. F. Jones.  He had sent me samples of the Rush hazel and although I was impressed by them, I mentioned in replying to him that we had wild hazels growing in our pasture which were as large or larger than the Rush hazelnuts.  I admitted that ours were usually very much infested with the hazel weevil.  Mr. Jones was immediately interested in wild hazels of such size and asked me to send him samples of them.  He wrote that he had never seen wild hazels with worms in them and would like to learn more about them.  I sent him both good and wormy nuts from the wild hazel bush to which I had referred.  He was so impressed by them that he wished me to dig up the plant and ship it to him, writing that he wished to cross it with filbert pollen as an experiment.  I sent it as he asked but before he was able to make the cross he intended, his death occurred.  Several years later, his daughter Mildred wrote to me about this hazel bush, asking if I knew where her father had planted it.  Unfortunately I could give her no information about where, among his many experiments, this bush would be, so that the plant was lost sight of for a time.  Later Miss Jones sent me nuts from a bush which she thought might be the one I had sent.  I was glad to be able to identify those nuts as being, indeed, from that bush.

In the spring of 1939, I crossed the Winkler hazel with filbert pollen; the European hazel with Winkler pollen; the Gellatly filbert with Jones hybrid pollen.  These crosses produced many plants which will be new and interesting types to watch and build from.  I have already made certain discoveries about them.  By close examination of about forty plants, I have been able to determine that at least five are definitely hybrids by the color, shape and size of their buds.  This is a very strong indication of hybridity with wild hazel or Winkler.  On one of these plants, about one-foot high, I found staminate bloom which I consider unusual after only two seasons’ growth.