catkins in a warm week at the end of February. A very desirable variety
of _Corylus avellana_ is one of which I now show specimens. The section
of the branch which I pass about carried four large nuts yesterday but I
find that one of them has disappeared, and it is probable that last
night in the sleeping car a squirrel got in when the porter was looking
the other way.

The specimen represents a seedling individual among a lot presented to
me by Prince Colloredo Mannsfeld of Bohemia nine years ago. This
particular shrub is rather homely, with small unattractive leaves and
big bony branches, but it bears heavily of large thin shelled hazels of
the highest quality, and the sort which are now bringing fifty cents per
pound in the New York market as green hazels. It blossoms very late in
the spring. I have not as yet given a name to this individual bush, but
as Professor J. Russell Smith caught my description of it and speaks of
it as "the bony-bush" we will allow his nomenclature to stand if members
of the Association wish to call for any of the wood for grafting or
budding purposes. _Corylus avellana_ in its many varieties is the chief
European hazel which gives us the cobnuts and filberts of the market,
and it is the one which will probably be most widely introduced into
this country. The name "filbert" is a corruption of "full beard" and is
properly applied only to those nuts in which the husk extends beyond the
nut. The shrubs of this species commonly reach a height of about fifteen
to eighteen feet, with a spread of the same dimensions. Trimming by the
horticulturist allows of the development of a larger bearing surface,
very much as it does with peach or apple trees.

In some parts of Europe this species serves for hedge fences, indicating
the practical ideas belonging to an older civilization. In this country
we make hedge fences of worthless osage orange, privet, or honey locust