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.

In 1924 I ordered one hundred small beechnut trees, _Fagus ferruginea_,
from the Sturgeon Bay Nurseries at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The company
was very generous and sent me three hundred of them. I planted these
trees in a heavy clay soil with limestone running near the surface. They
grew well the first year, except that there was heavy mortality during
cold weather. In working with these trees my lack of experience and
horticultural knowledge was against me. They could not tolerate the soil
and within three years they were all dead.

To give variety to the landscape at my farm, I planted several other
kinds of trees. Among these were Kentucky coffee-trees which have
beautiful bronze foliage in the spring and honey locusts. I planted five
hundred Douglas fir but unfortunately, I put these deep in the woods
among heavy timber where they were so shaded that only a few lived.
Later, I moved the surviving fir trees into an open field where they
still flourish. About two hundred fifty pines of mixed varieties--white,
Norway and jack--that I planted in the woods, also died.

I decided, then, that evergreens might do better if they were planted
from seeds. I followed instructions in James W. Toumey's "Seeding and
Planting in the Practice of Forestry," in bed culture and spot seeding.
In the latter one tears off the sod in favorable places and throws seed