MR. LITTLEPAGE:  The proposition of topworking is one of the schemes where art beats nature.  In the fight in Congress over the oleomargarine bill some years ago, one member who favored it, said in support of his contention, that nature always beat art; and one of his opponents immediately referred him to a picture gallery near, where pictures of the statesmen were exhibited, as a proof that art sometimes beats nature.  In top working, art improves upon nature.

The first thing to be considered is what is topworking, and then the logical question, why topworking.  Possibly this should come first.  If an individual is dissatisfied with his friends and neighbors, he must put up with them; he cannot change them.  But if he is dissatisfied with a nut tree, it is his own fault if he does not change it.  It can be top worked.  He does not care to top work maples or oaks.  We only top work to get something better than we have.  The trees, of course, that interest us specially in top working are the nut trees.  We have seedling pecans, seedling walnuts, seedling hickories, and seedling chestnuts.  Down at the mouth of Green River in Kentucky are nearly two hundred acres of wild pecan trees.  So far as we know there are only two trees in that orchard worthy of propagation.  Of thousands of trees there we have propagated only two varieties.  These trees are now too large to top work, but had it been possible 150 years ago to go in there and select the desirable nuts, and topwork all the other trees with these, there could have been a great orchard there now of the highest quality nuts.

Topworking consists in cutting off the top of some undesirable seedling and replacing it with scions or buds from some desirable variety.  It is just the same as any other grafting or budding process.  Almost any size tree can be topworked but, of course, the larger the tree the more difficult the operation.  A young tree, from two to five inches in diameter, can be sawed off four or five feet above the ground and topworked by grafting from two to four scions on it, by the slip bark process.  If the tree is larger than five inches in diameter, it is better to go up to the first branches, saw off part of them and proceed just as if each branch were itself a small tree.  If the tree is a large tree, with a number of branches or prongs, it is best to work part of them one year and leave the remaining branches to maintain the root system.  It would probably kill a large tree to cut the whole top off at one time.  I have seen trees, two feet in diameter, successfully topworked.  It sometimes happens that the scions placed in the tree, in the spring, for some reason or other, do not grow.  The tree then sends up nice green shoots that later in the season can be budded into just as if they were small seedlings.  The wild black walnut trees, growing around the fields and hills, can all be very easily topworked to the English walnut by the slip bark method.  The scions must be dormant and the tree starting into active growth.