I also believe that I have added to the hardiness factor of the apricot by making frequent grafts.  It is my theory that the root stock is able to exert some influence over the top other than mere maintenance of life.  By frequently uniting a hardy stock with a less hardy top, I think that the individuality of the top part may be somewhat broken down and the extra characteristic of hardiness added to it.  After the fifth re-graft of this apricot made in eight years, I am convinced by its appearance and behavior that it is capable of becoming a reliable apricot for the region around St. Paul.  Today the apricot still exists grafted on plum at my nursery at River Falls, Wisconsin, and the weakness of the tree seems to be in the union between the top and the plum stock.  If this union were not so corky and large and succulent it might be less injured by our winters; therefore it is quite apparent that the plum is not a congenial stock for an apricot, at least it does not produce a satisfactory union.  I am now making tests with this same variety by grafting it on more hardy apricot seedling stock such as the Prof.  N. E. Hansen of Brookings, South Dakota, introduces.

Chapter 11

PESTS AND PETS

The pocket gopher is an herbivorous animal which attains approximately the size of a gray squirrel.  It has a sleek, grey-brown coat of fur which is almost as fine as that of the mole and would, I think, make a good quality fur except that the skin is too tender to stand either sewing or the wear that fur coats have to undergo.  I learned this by trapping them and having a furrier try them out, as I knew that the quickest way to get rid of a pest is to eat it or use its hide.  Since I found its hide to be of no practical value, I enjoined my troop of Boy Scouts, a willing group of boys, to carry out my suggestions that they skin and prepare one of these animals in a stew.  Gophers are purely herbivorous and I thought they should be quite edible, but as I am a strict vegetarian myself, I had to depend on them to make this experiment.  The boys followed instructions up to the point of cooking, but by that time the appearance of the animal had so deprived them of their enthusiasm and appetites that I had no heart to urge them to continue.  I am still of the opinion, however, that to meat-eating people, the pocket gopher would taste as good as squirrel or pigeon.

The first introduction I had to the devastating work that these animals can do in an orchard was when I was working among my young apple and plum trees one spring.  I noticed that the foliage was turning yellow on many of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were very loose in the ground.  At first I thought that planting operations and heaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but in testing the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pull it out of the ground easily.