The soil for a seedbed should, of course, be made rich and deep, or the same as recommended for chestnuts, and all the means usually employed to assist the growth of cultivated plants are applicable to nut trees. I may also add that cutworms, white grubs and other noxious insects are enemies of nut-tree seedlings as well as garden vegetables. The seedling hickories should be treated as advised for chestnuts; that is, dug up when one or, at the latest, two years old, and their central or taproot shortened to at least one-half their original length, and then reset in nursery rows, and at a distance of twelve to fifteen inches apart in the row. If grown in ordinary upland, the transplanted seedlings will make a better growth if heavily mulched than under the usual system of clean cultivation, and it is usually less expensive; besides, by keeping the surface of the soil cool and moist, we encourage and assist the production of fibrous lateral roots, which, as a rule, are none too abundant on seedling hickories, no matter under what conditions or system of cultivation they are raised. When the seedlings have grown in the nursery rows two or three years, they will probably be large enough for planting where they are to remain permanently; but if, for any reason, they are not disposed of, then they should be again transplanted,--the larger roots shortened,--and re-set in good rich soil. The object of transplanting is to insure the production of small fibrous roots, and a frequent renewal of the same, close to the main stem or stock, as long as the trees remain in the nursery, whether this be two or twenty years. This is somewhat of an expensive operation, but the value of stock thus handled is enhanced far more than the cost of such transplanting, and purchasers are, or at least should be, willing to pay a fair price for such trees. It is the natural habit of the hickories, as well as many other kinds of deciduous trees, to produce in their earlier stages of growth rather large, deeply penetrating, naked roots, with few small fibers, and in this condition they are not so readily and successfully transplanted as the kinds possessing a more ramified root system. This, perhaps, has misled many persons to believe that certain kinds of trees, like the hickories, could not be moved at all, or at least not with any assurance of being made to live. This idea has become so prevalent among inexperienced cultivators, and, I regret to add, often reiterated by theorists, that it has discouraged many who otherwise would have raised and planted nut trees in preference to other kinds.