In grafting isolated stocks in this way, a small or large stake should be placed by the side of each, to indicate their position, and also protect them from being trampled upon. I make this suggestion because, in my own experience, it has often proved successful with various kinds of hard-wooded trees and shrubs that failed when grafted in the spring. Here in the North it is rather difficult, as well as expensive, to protect cions set in the open ground in the fall; but in the South it is different, and a handful of almost any coarse litter would be sufficient to prevent severe freezing. But grafting in the fall in the open ground is unnecessary, where small seedling stocks are used in the propagation of any kind of tree; in fact, nurserymen do very little grafting of this kind in spring, for they learned, by long experience, that the most economical and certain method of multiplying such trees is to take up the stocks in the fall, and then graft them indoors during the winter, having stocks and cions stored in cool cellars or pits, where they will be readily accessible when wanted. Apples, pears, quinces, grapes, and many other kinds of hardy trees, shrubs and vines are now extensively propagated by grafting during the winter months, and I do not know of any good reason why the hickories and other closely allied nut trees should not be multiplied in this way. I have tried it, on a limited scale, with the shellbark hickories, and with fair success, and in my opinion it is the only way by which the hickories, including the pecan, can be multiplied cheaply enough to become of commercial importance. The small stocks of one or two years old should be taken up in the fall, and then crown grafted any time from December to March in the Northern States, but the earlier the better; then pack away the grafted stocks in moss or soil, in a cool cellar, or heel-in elsewhere, as, for instance, in pits or frames, where they will not be frozen, and yet cool enough to prevent active growth.