MR. O'ROURKE: You have brought up a very important point and something we should not neglect. It may be that drying to a certain degree will induce dormancy, a grievously overworked word, but you know what I mean. It may take two years for the seed to germinate, as Mr. Hardy has suggested. If you can leave them in that cold frame over this winter, maybe you can tell us next year just what happened. MR. PATAKY: If we take nature's way, watch a squirrel plant a hickory or black walnut. He will bury it about an inch deep, and it will stay moist all winter long, the same as if it were stratified. But if you take a nut and store in a hot place you are going to slow up or kill that germ. You can do that very easily in a chestnut. Take a little advice from nature itself in the locality where you are. If you are in the South, that nut can start growing in the fall, and it probably won't hurt it, but if you are in the North, you don't want to start a nut growing in the winter, because it's going to get winter killed. MR. O'ROURKE: In all probability the amount of oxygen about the germinating seedling might be quite a factor. The shallow planted seed will have more oxygen available than deep planted seed, everything else being equal. If we are finished with the discussion or germination of seeds, we can go on to the next question, that of a suitable root stock for hickory--and that could keep us here for two or three days. Have you had some experience, Mr. Ferguson? MR. FERGUSON: We use the pecan and the shagbark as root stock for the hickory group. Formerly we have used some of the bitternut, but we do not use it any more. Some of the hickories will grow well on pecan, and some are not satisfactory at all. What they will do in old age is hard to tell. We have a few in the orchard down in Mr. Snyder's farm. I think we have Stratford on pecan, which is not satisfactory. Pecan grows too fast for the Stratford, and some way or other it just doesn't work. MR. O'ROURKE: Are you familiar with Mr. Lassiter's stock work? MR. FERGUSON: He has used the Rockville as an intermediate stock on pecan. The Rockville is a hybrid of the pecan and the shellbark. MR. O'ROURKE: Mr. Lassiter sent us a letter in which he stated that he had a good variety of shagbark that when grafted on the Rockville intermediate stock produced much better nuts than on pecans alone. Is that due to the exceptional vigor of Rockville which apparently is a hybrid and may have hybrid vigor? Again, we can only guess. This interstock problem is a big problem. We now have some evidence that pecan is not always satisfactory for all varieties of hickory, although Mr. Dunstan at Greensboro, North Carolina, states it's been satisfactory for every variety he has worked upon it. MR. HARDY: I am inclined to believe that root stocks and scion varieties worked in the north and grown in the north or worked in the south and grown in the south may not react the same.