A number of years ago, after leaving school, I entered a large nursery and garden establishment in Germany, as an apprentice boy, to learn the garden business, to become a gardener and horticulturist, to learn how to raise trees and other plants, to learn how to graft, to prune and cultivate, and, in general, to take care of all kinds of growing plants. One of the first duties bestowed upon me in my new place was the charge of a large plot of young hazel or filbert plants. To prune or graft them? Not at all. At that time I did not know anything about such skilled labor. I was merely told to weed and hoe them and to keep them clean. It was not just very elegant work, but, ladies and gentlemen, I enjoyed very much indeed, every minute so employed among those young filbert bushes. I became really attached to them and knew practically every plant in the plot, and almost believe they knew me, too.
Now what was the reason for this immense pleasure I found in working among those plants? Was it perhaps from the commercial or financial point of view, the future income from them for fruit or when the plants reached a saleable age? Not at all. I was then too much of a boy and did not comprehend such a thing as that. It was merely the fond and pleasant recollection of my childhood, of my boyhood, when, together with other children, in the proper season, we went hunting for the common hazel nuts, the _Corylus avellana_, as the gathering of these nuts is one of the greatest pleasures of the German country child, and to roam through fields and woods in late summer in those beautiful September days, when the foliage of trees and bushes begin to color, when the birds of the garden, field and forest begin to assemble for future migration, when goldenrod, asters and other field flowers are reaching their greatest beauty, then, ladies and gentlemen, the hazelnut has reached maturity. The nut itself is a very beautiful brown color, the outer bark a golden yellow, the leaves of the plants slightly colored with bronze, pink or yellow, a most beautiful combination, a pleasure to look upon, and a sight never to be forgotten. Whoever has had an opportunity to see and admire a well fruited hazel plant, at the time of maturity, will agree with me that it is a thing of beauty, not only during the fruit bearing season, but in fact throughout the whole winter, with the handsome staminate flowers or catkins appearing very abundantly in early fall, and remaining throughout the winter, until late spring. Of all these pleasures, these beautiful sights, etc., of which a vivid and fond recollection caused all the pleasures in cultivating the above mentioned hazel lot, we need not be deprived in our otherwise so richly blest country. It is true that, at the present time, we have no American native hazel, that can fully compete with the better European varieties, but we hope that in time not far off, through scientific hybridization, such will be produced. For the time being, we have some very fine European varieties as a substitute, which for years have stood the test very well, and should be planted wherever a place can be spared for a few of them, and great pleasure and enjoyment will be the result. So much for the pleasure of raising hazel nuts. I have related the foregoing merely to show the lasting pleasure and enjoyments derived from the planting, cultivating and gathering of a few European hazel nuts.