2. Lounsberry, C. C. Use of Growth Substance in Bench Grafting Walnuts and Hickories. Northern Nut Growers Association 1938 Report, p. 63. 3. Nelson, Julius. Fermentation and Germ Life. N. J. Ag. Exp. Sta. Bul. 134, 1899. 4. Witt, A. W. and Howard Spence. Vegetative Propagation of Walnuts. Ann. Rep. East Malling Res. Station 1926-27. A Method of Budding Walnuts H. LYNN TUTTLE, Clarkston, Wash. It took man some thirty thousand years to learn to build a fire--conveniently. I thought it was going to take me that long to learn how to bud walnuts, but fortunately the period has been somewhat shortened. When I first began to propagate, or try to propagate, walnuts, I naturally looked to the approved and accepted methods. For me, they did not work. Before I was through I think I tried them all. I patch-budded with variations and improvisations. I shield-budded and bark-grafted. I coated the wounds with grafting-wax, latex, cellophane, asphalt and paraffine. I trimmed off the bud shoulders to make a smoother tie and trimmed around the edges to make more contact. I wrapped with raffia, strings, rags and rubber strips and tacked with small nails. Whatever I did or however I did it results were all about the same--the sap soured. In fact over a period of years I tried every way I could think up or read about to bring the bud and the cambium layer together and make them stick. Results were surprisingly uniform--the sap soured. But we must not dwell too long on the shots that missed. As with a refractory engine that will suddenly sputter, there came some elements of success. The point to learn was, why? Concentrating on the shield bud entirely we determined to find these whys. So we tried taking big slabs of bark along with the bud, peeling out the wood, breaking off the leaf stem entirely and waxing the scar and making an unnecessarily long cut for the bud. The bark stuck fairly well but the buds died. This was some encouragement and I knew that with enough time, reason and a little luck we would eventually hit the mark. Now Dame Fortune had decreed that I be raised on a grain and stock ranch where the only trees we could see were in the distant mountains, or, if we rode in the canyons, cottonwoods and choke-cherries. My experience and training was with animals, and animals, especially horses, seem quite susceptible to accident. The first principle of treating almost any wound is to give it drainage, otherwise, both literally and figuratively, the "sap" soured. Thus it dawned on me that a tree-wound, even if only skin deep should have the same treatment as a flesh wound. And drainage, being desirable, should be ample.