Mr. Jones once wrote that he had given up with the hickories "in disgust." So far as is known, he never used any stock for hickories other than pecan, which grew well, made good unions and generally outgrew the scions. John Hershey, however, says this is not a good combination, but there are too many trees of Jones' propagation about the country, to accept Hershey's verdict altogether. Carl Weschcke[23], of St. Paul, uses bitternut largely or entirely; if it is a mistake, it will be expensive. Hickories are slow to grow and one gets too few nuts at best. It takes a lifetime to get even small crops, and for our part, we want no bitternuts on the place. Too often shagbarks fail to unite with bitternut and frequently they are short-lived.
In 1916 Mr. Jones propagated and introduced the Beaver hickory, from central Pennsylvania, a supposed bitternut-shagbark cross. It proved of little value and soon disappeared. The Fairbanks from northeast Iowa, a similar cross, was introduced the same year. It was one of the prettiest of all hybrids and stood up about the longest, but it had too much bitterness in the pellicle encasing the kernel and was much subject to weevil injury.
Many varieties of Persian (English) walnut were propagated and brought into bearing. Mr. Jones included a majority of the varieties brought into the country from France by Felix Gillet, of Nevada City, Calif., as early as 1870. There were Franquette, Mayette, Meylan, Parisienne, and a cutleaf variety which appears to have had no other name. A California variety of which he thought well for a number of years was Eureka, a western introduction of 1908. He propagated a number of eastern varieties such as Lancaster (Alpine) in 1913, although credit went to Mr. Rush; Boston, from Massachusetts, also in 1913; Ontario, from Canada, in 1914; and probably others. He obtained Chinese walnuts, from P. Wang, Kinsan Arboretum, Shanghai, and sold seedlings at wholesale. These were an Asiatic form of _Juglans regia_. He limed the soil, and thought the effects were beneficial. In this he was warmly supported by T. P. Littlepage and more recently by growers in Northern Ohio; but lately liming has not been found beneficial in Italy. All in all, however, the Persian walnut was not particularly dependable, and during the last few years the nursery which he left discontinued selling Persian walnut trees. In the East, the trees of older varieties usually were little more than interesting novelties.