I ordered a few hickories at the same time but these eventually died.  My experience with hickories was very discouraging since they were my favorite nuts and I had set my heart on growing some.  I think I should have given up attempting them had not one dealer, J. F. Jones, urged that I buy just three more hickory trees of the Beaver variety.  He gave me special instructions on how to prepare them against winter.  I have always felt that what he told me was indeed special and very valuable since those three trees lived.  Subsequently, I bought several hundred dollars worth of trees from him.  More than that, we became friends.  I visited him at his nurseries in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he again demonstrated his interest and generosity by giving me both horticultural information and the kindest hospitality.  My friendship with him was but one of many that I have formed while traveling and corresponding in the interests of nut culture.  True and lasting friends such men make, too, with no circumstances of selfish import to taint the pleasure of the relationship.

Since I wanted to have many black walnut trees some day, I decided to plant ten bushels of black walnuts in rows.  I thought I could later graft these myself and save expense.  The theory was all right but when I came to practice it, I found I had not taken squirrels into consideration.  These bushy-tailed rats dug up one complete bed which contained two bushels of nuts and reburied them in haphazard places around the farm.  When the nuts started to sprout, they came up in the fields, in the gardens, and on the lawn—­everywhere except where I had intended them to be.  I later was grateful to those squirrels, though, because, through their redistributing these nuts I learned a great deal about the effect of soil on black walnut trees, even discovering that what I thought to be suitable was not.  The trees which the squirrels planted for me are now large and lend themselves to experimental grafting.  On them I have proved, and am still proving, new varieties of the English walnut.

The other eight bushels had been planted near a roadside and close to some farm buildings.  The constant human activity thereabouts probably made the squirrels less bold, for although they carried off at least a bushel of walnuts, about two thousand seedlings grew.  I had planted these too close together and as the trees developed they became so crowded that many died.  The remaining seedlings supplied me with root-stocks for experimental work which proved very valuable.

I have always suspected the squirrels of having been responsible for the fact that my first attempt to grow hickory seedlings was unsuccessful.  I planted a quart of these nuts and not one plant came up.  No doubt the squirrels dug them up as soon as I planted them and probably they enjoyed the flavor as much as I always have.