Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting / Pleasant Valley, New York, August 28, 29 and 30, 1950

by Unknown

MONDAY EVENING SESSION

DR. MacDANIELS: Without any question at all, I think, the most important single consideration in determining the planting of nuts is the matter of varieties, and I know that Dr. Crane has some ideas along that line which he wishes to develop, and without any further talk on my part, I will introduce Dr. Harley Crane, United States Department of Agriculture.

(Applause.)

Nut Varieties: A Round Table Discussion

H. L. CRANE, Chairman

DR. CRANE: Mr. President, members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association: I think it is, without a question of doubt, of the greatest importance that we consider this question of varieties. After all, a variety of any plant, in my opinion—which I think can be well supported—is the most important thing that anyone can consider when it comes to planting or developing a nut tree or a fruit tree or anything in the fruit line. We can cultivate and fertilize and spray and do everything that is needed to be done today in a modern fruit or nut orchard farm, but if the variety is not suited to the climate, if it is not a good variety, all our efforts that we make towards developing a good tree and bringing it into fruiting are wasted.

I know that every one of you appreciates old varieties of corn and just what has been done in our new varieties of hybrid corn, how hybrid corn has changed the variety situation. Now it's hybrid this and hybrid that, because hybrid varieties are generally superb.

Now, at this time in our nut work we are a long way yet from growing good hybrid varieties, and I feel that there has been an effort on the part of a lot of people to capitalize on the word "hybrid," because hybrid corn has been such a success; and we figured that by carrying it over into other plants, particularly the nut trees, we would get the same remarkable performance from hybrid nuts that we do from hybrid corn. But that is not the case.

We will come to that some day in the future, maybe—not in our lifetime, but we will have hybrid varieties, because, after all, our great improvements that have come in most of our plants, in corn and in wheat, and in other plants, have come through the mixing of the genes, or the characters that we have differing between species.

In our nuts, now, with the exception of hicans, we are still dealing with pure species, and most, if not quite all, of our hicans are worthless at the present time, largely because of sterility.

A good variety is the most outstanding thing that a horticulturist can get or can have, because of the fact that it does have the character in it which will make good growth. It will set a lot of nuts, it will carry them through to maturity and it fills them, and if a variety doesn't do that, it's not a good variety. Then after we get the nuts filled, cracking quality, eating quality or oil content, and all these things come next.

Now, this brings us next to the very important consideration of how are we going to get a new good variety? Well, we can do that by selecting from seedling nuts, or we can make controlled pollinations, crossing different varieties, or varieties of different species, planting the nuts or growing new trees and then selecting out of them those that have the desirable characters.

But the first thing that we have got to do after we have either selected the nut or made the hybrid and selected the nut is to evaluate the nut as to whether it does have the first character, or proper characters, that we ought to have in the nut. Does the crop ripen evenly? Whether it hulls readily or comes free of the husk is a minor consideration, provided that the nut itself has the desired characteristics. By that I mean, does it have a good, large kernel which is well filled and bright in color, or good flavor free from any objectionable characters? How about its shell, percentage of shell in relation to kernel? Those are some of the things that we have first got to consider.

That's what we can do in holding our contests to find good varieties. Those are the ones submitted by growers and others. They are in competition with nuts from other sources, and then the committee, or someone, goes over and rates them, and places them, just as has been done by Mr. Chase and others in their Carpathian walnut contest for members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association.

Now, at the present time we have no standard method for evaluating the nut. It's the opinion of the judges that do the scoring or rating which determines the placing that the nuts get. Well, now, that's one of the things that we members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association have been working on for a long while, but we still haven't arrived at any definite place.

Well, then, what's the next step that we take up? The next thing we do, some growers find out that a Persian walnut from Mr. Shessler, for example, placed second in the contest this year. They will get some scions from Mr. Shessler, or somebody else, and they will make a few grafts and grow some trees, and then they will make a study of these nuts and find out how well they do and what they are like under their conditions, and that's about as far as it goes.

Well, now, we cannot continue to do that kind of a job, as I see it. If we go back over the reports of the Northern Nut Growers' Association we will find that this matter of varieties is discussed in a very large majority of the papers that have been presented. But those that have taken part in investigations and in advising the public, like those in the Extension Services of the colleges, those teaching in the universities, those doing research, like myself, anybody who has to answer correspondence from would-be nut growers, almost always get the question, "What variety should I plant?" Then they put it up to me or Dr. McKay, or Dr. Colby, and think that you could just name right and left, and they ask, "What varieties shall we plant?" They put you right down on the spot. Here you are, you are supposed to be a real expert, know all things, and they are asking you for advice, and they will take that advice and carry it out.

Now, today it puts a fellow in an awfully hot spot, because as you read the reports of the Northern Nut Growers' Association you find that there is absolutely no unanimity of opinion. Every grower is absolutely certain in his ideas, and they are different from every other grower's.

Well, you can't recommend them all. It's really impossible. Now, this is one of the things that the Northern Nut Growers have been dealing with all of these years. This is the forty-first annual meeting. You'd have thought in 41 years we'd have come up with something, but we haven't yet. Now, I feel that it's about time that we stop and take stock of our situation.

I am not going to do the talking tonight, I am just making a few suggestions and trying to direct the thought a little bit. But one of the nuts that we have done so much with and have said so much about in our reports is the black walnut. It's very interesting to read the reports on varieties of black walnuts and how those who have grown black walnuts differ in their opinion, regardless. Well, I don't know. When I get a letter coming in from most anywhere in the country wanting to know what variety of black walnut to plant, do you know what I tell them?

MR. CALDWELL: Let them find out for themselves.

DR. CRANE: No, sir, they will never find out, not in their lifetime. I tell them to plant Thomas. Thomas, Thomas Thomas! Why?

MR. KINTZEL: Because we know more about that than any other.

DR. CRANE: That is right. I expect there are four or five times as many Thomas walnuts propagated and sold by nurserymen in the United States as all other varieties.

MR. CORSAN: It always has a bigger crop, too.

DR. CRANE: It bears, that's one thing. It may not always fill, but Thomas is a good variety. But we in the Nut Growers' Association haven't the nerve to come out and say the Thomas is a good variety. It has its faults. I know I am going to be wrong in a lot of cases by planting Thomas.

MR. CORSAN: But don't plant it outside the peach belt.

DR. CRANE: Well, the peach belt is an awful lot of territory. I know I am going to be wrong, but I know I am going to be safer with Thomas variety than I would be with some of the others.

Now, I think that it's time, and I think that the biggest thing that the Northern Nut Growers' Association can do is to give very serious thought and take action at this meeting some way looking towards the Association's giving consideration to methods and means whereby we can properly evaluate varieties that we have that are growing so that we can recommend and tell others the varieties that they should grow.

You know, here is the situation exactly. In the territory of the Northern Nut Growers we don't have a commercial industry at the present time. I doubt if there is a single family of the Northern Nut Growers who are here that depend on the sale of nuts for their living. Well, when your living depends on something, you take an awful lot of interest in it. And that has been true in the case of apples, for example. I don't know how many there are, but twenty years ago or more there have been fifteen or sixteen thousand apple varieties that have been described and have been planted and propagated, and you can name all of the commercial apple varieties grown in the United States almost on the fingers of your hands. That is, the important ones. Oh, the list has grown, would probably take in 200, but that 190 hardly make a drop in the bucket as compared to the ten big ones.

Well, the same thing is true with peaches. The Elberta peach just is completely outstanding. It's a big commercial peach. Now, in all of the Association here, almost every paper that is presented always has some commercial aspect mentioned in the paper, but we could never have any commercial industry as long as we are fooling with a lot of these varieties with nobody giving them the serious consideration that they deserve, in an effort to properly evaluate them.

This evaluation of a variety is our problem. I have given an awful lot of thought to it over the years and how to get around it, how to come up with the proper answers within the near future so that we can be of help to others and stop a lot of our amateurs, those who are attracted to the industry, from making mistakes and getting discouraged. That is the problem. And that is the thing that I want all of you to be thinking about tonight and help us with the suggestions.

Now, we could just start almost, I expect, in dogfights, if we were to conduct this round table to get to discussing the different qualities or desirability or other aspects among varieties, and each fellow would be right, because I know there wouldn't be agreement. It would make an interesting round table, but I don't know how constructive it would be. So I have tried in these preliminary remarks to get you to thinking about this problem, of evaluation.

Now, there is one other way that we could go about it. For years we have had in the Northern Nut Growers Association a group of officers that are known under the title of State Vice-Presidents, and I think if you judge by their performance in the past, the main reason that we have had these State Vice-presidents is that we were attempting to confer some honor on somebody, the honor being in having them so designated and their names published as State Vice-presidents in the proceedings. In many cases their performance hasn't warranted that honor, because, after all, a vice-president is supposed to be a working vice-president, not an ornament. The ornament is supposed to be the president, if we have any such thing. At least, that's what I have heard. I have never been president. And I have thought that if in the consideration of our State Vice-presidents we select the ones who are particularly active and very much interested in this variety problem and in the Northern Nut Growers' Association, that we might take up this variety problem and get us information by two ways.

One would be through surveys made in their states by contact with the growers, either personal contacts or by letters. Then those reports could be assembled, and we could have our variety committee over all, so the Association could attempt to evaluate. That would be one start.

Another thing would be that our State Vice-president in collaboration with the President, would appoint a state committee. Now, we have a lot of growers in some states that are vitally interested. In Pennsylvania, for example, and in Ohio and New York we have a lot of growers who are members of this or state associations that are vitally interested in this thing. You have a State Vice-president appointing a committee in collaboration with the president of the National to evaluate the variety situation as it exists in their state.

Now, we would expect them to do some honest work on this thing and come up with a report in which the different members could agree. Then we would be nearer getting unanimity of opinions. We have got to get this some way so that we can agree upon what we do with the answers to individuals better than we have been doing in the past.

There may be some error to this. Well, you see, I know that some of you must be familiar with the New Jersey Peach Testing Association. I am not sure just what the name of it is, but it's something like that.

A MEMBER: New Jersey Peach Council.

DR. CRANE: It has been a great power and a great help in regard to the selection and evaluation of peach varieties in the State of New Jersey. In New Jersey the experiment station has had a peach breeding program going for a number of years. They have done outstanding work, and they have brought out some very good varieties. Well, the station has selected the good ones and discarded the poor ones, or what they thought were the poor ones. They call in members of this Peach Growers' Council, and they have the peaches evaluated. They are passing them on to the fruit growers. "Do you think, in your opinion, that this would be a good peach for us to grow? Is it better? Does it have better flavor than other peach varieties?" They will, out of that group, select some of these new ones, maybe. Then the New Jersey Experiment station will see to it that the trees of these varieties are propagated, and they are given to the members of that Association in order that they can plant them under their conditions and grow them to fruiting and see how they do.

Well, then, this committee still continues to evaluate them, and if the members of the Association say, "Well, that's a variety we should grow," then they will grow it. If they feel it isn't as good as some they already have, they throw it away and that's the end of it. But they don't clutter up the variety situation with a lot of poor stuff. And they make profits, because always two heads are better than one, even though one is a sheep's head, as the old saying goes. Well, when you get four or five or more in a group and they agree, you can be sure that their opinion is far better than five individual opinions or judgments.

I am very anxious to see that tonight we agree in open discussion of this whole variety evaluation problem and that we start work some way, somehow, towards working out some means whereby we can properly and more effectively and more quickly evaluate our varieties than we have up to this time. Now, that's the end of my story. The talk and the rest of it is up to you folks.

Mr. Anthony and Mr. Sherman have been working over here in Pennsylvania. They have found a lot of new material known only to a few people. They are just wringing their hands over there to know how in this wide world this stuff can be evaluated, the good saved, and that which is not worthy of doing anything with, well, "just pass it up" and let it go. That's the way we make profits.

Their experience is no different from all the rest. We have nut growers with whom I have had correspondence in years past who want to propagate material that this Association should have flatly condemned years ago, because the majority of the group here knows it is worthless, but they just haven't done it. Now, it's time that we change this thing, or I will tell you frankly in a lot of ways the Nut Growers' Association has become a social institution, rather than one which we learn from and recommend practices to the new groups that are coming on to keep them from making mistakes.

Now, I have talked from the bottom of my heart tonight, and I want some of the rest of you here to express your opinions and give suggestions as to how we might do that.

MR. WEBER: Dr. Crane, I think I will start the ball rolling, and I think Ohio has taken the lead in the very thing you have been talking about. It's the Northern Ohio group. They have been very active in finding out the better nut varieties that were suitable to Ohio conditions, both the black walnuts and the hickories. They have conducted contests, both for black walnut and hickories. They practice what they preach. They have traded their information. They are up in the northern part, and I am down in the southern part, too far to be included with them, so I am not blowing my own horn; I am blowing it for the other fellows. And I think they are a worthwhile group, and if you look to the membership in this Association in Ohio, I think it has the largest membership. And you get that Northern Ohio group, they test out varieties, and a man will fight for a particular one in his group against the variety from another. And so they are not afraid to stand up and say what they think.

But having done that, we need the aid of our different state agriculture groups. You must have a place where they can go and put those trees on a testing ground so the people can go there and see them. You can go there to this Ohio experiment station and you will see this variety growing, or you go over to the other branch and see this variety growing, and then when they find the state has taken it up, it gives them confidence more than a fellow blowing his horn for one variety against another variety.

You have to get the members in their own states to form their own local organizations and carry out what you have been talking about here and find out in their particular states which are the best varieties. And then you get a starting point, and each individual state's agricultural experiment station should take it up, follow it up, if they have the funds. Where if one individual gives his mite and then his health fails or life fails, why, he has contributed his mite, and it will be perpetuated. But if it's on my place or someone else's place, the next fellow doesn't appreciate it, and if they need the wood handy, down comes that tree. It has no memories from then on, and it's not perpetuated.

So I think some of the Northern Ohio members—I think Mr. Smith is here, are there any other members? Silvis—deserve a lot of credit.

MR. McDANIEL: I would like particularly to hear if the Northern Ohio group has got together on a discard list. Have they agreed on any one variety they don't want to plant?

MR. STERLING SMITH: I am glad you brought out the black walnut. I am more familiar with it than with other species, and I have been personally thinking along your line for several years. We have in black walnuts probably over 200. I started to count them up one time. I got 196, and I know there were more than that, I don't know how many. And among those nearly 200 varieties of black walnuts I am confident there must be 150 at least that aren't worth being grown—that is, in Northern Ohio. They may be good in some other places, or they may be worthwhile for experimental purposes. But to grow them for commercial means or for home use, they are not good varieties. And I have suggested to different ones eliminating them, or trying to work out, say, maybe 25 or 50 and then from those 50 try to pick out ten. There has not much been done on it. There is a lot of difficulty in a situation like that.

DR. CRANE: That's right.

MR. STERLING SMITH: Here is one thing: What one person has varieties which correspond with what his neighbor or somebody ten miles down the road will have? We will take Grundy, for example, or Rohwer, some of those. Two or three of them might have that, but the ten or fifteen other members in the near vicinity won't have that variety. That's one of the difficulties.

And I have thought personally that there should be some sort of committee set up along the line you suggested, not necessarily on state lines, but more on zone or regional lines.

DR. CRANE: Yes, sir, that's what I mean.

MR. STERLING SMITH: Because those suitable in Northern Ohio wouldn't necessarily be suitable in Southern Ohio, and so with any of the states along that tier of states. And I think there should be some type of committee set up to judge these different varieties as far as we can, and also to enlarge their testing plan.

Mr. Shessler, I believe, has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 under test, maybe three or four of the same tree. For myself, I don't know exactly what I do have, somewhere between 40 and 50 varieties, but there are only about 10 or 12 of them bearing. And I have of late years started working on that line, having sort of a test orchard, having one or two trees of the several varieties so I can find out what to plant.

Not too many years ago I was in the position of the amateur who wanted to know what to plant. Should I plant Stabler, Ohio, Thomas? It was just like you spoke about concerning the inquiries that you have. I have earnestly read all the reports and have earnestly looked where I could get them in time for the current year. I read so I would know what the new varieties are and what different people's opinions on them were. And I think there should be a central committee, probably like you suggested.

And another suggestion I would like to make would be that before we permit, as far as possible, any further new varieties of black walnut to be mentioned or published, that they be passed upon by several of the members, oh, maybe ten of the members, at least, to learn what their opinion is before they are mentioned. Lots of times one or two persons have a good opinion of the nut, and immediately something is published about it, and as you say, immediately a half dozen fellows write for it, as in your Persian walnut contest. And it would be better if that nut weren't allowed to be named until it has been passed upon by a qualified group of, we will say, experts. And that same condition should be carried out with the Persian walnut and the hickories and northern pecans and other groups of nuts we are interested in.

MR. CORSAN: I'd like to suggest that we get started on this matter of varieties, because we can say an awful lot and then say nothing. I have tested a great many varieties of black walnuts, and as soon as I hear people talk about the Stabler walnut, I know they know nothing about nuts at all, because the Stabler has a crop on it only about once in twenty years, and then it's a small crop. It's a very good nut to eat and crack, but it's not for crops. As this gentleman says, the Thomas. We all know the Thomas. There is one point about the Thomas, you have got to keep it within just the northern limits of the peach belt where the peach will grow. There are years that come around when the Thomas will not mature. The frost will come on. It has a very thick outer shell, the hull, and the hull comes off the nut itself quite clean. And then we hear people talking about the Ohio. Now, what about it? Well, it's a monster nut when you look at it on the tree, but knock the thick hull off of it, the strong, sturdy hull, and there's only a little nut in it. Yet you have something that cracks well enough. The nuts I would condemn right away are the Ohio and Stabler. No doubt about it.

Now the Cresco, very, very rich! That tree will actually kill itself, just overbearing. You know a tree can kill itself. Some people kill themselves having 24 or 30 children, but that's about what that tree will do.

Then we have the nut that years ago I saw, the Snyder, and I said to Mr. Snyder, "Look, it's a sure nut." He said, "Never saw it." He looked at it, examined it, and it's a marvelous nut. I think I have the backing of our friend, Mr. Gilbert Smith. I think he'd back me in saying that that is one of the best nuts in the world, even with the Thomas.

But we don't quite want to reduce—comb down the list of varieties like the apple grower has. When you go to Boston and ask a peddler or hawker about "apples," he won't know what you are talking about. Apples?—they wonder what the word is. It is "McIntosh." They will go around the street shouting, "McIntosh, McIntosh." You won't hear the word "apple" in Boston, it's "McIntosh."

Now, let's get down to nuts, and let us know our nuts.

MR. CALDWELL: (New York State College of Forestry.) I suppose this is my first time at a meeting of this sort, and probably I should observe with a critical mind. But when you speak about a committee to pass upon varieties, immediately I start wondering exactly what you mean by a variety, and then I start wondering what your approach is in picking that so-called variety.

First of all, a "variety" that you use is not really a variety. It is just a vegetation of one particular tree that you happened upon. You decided by chance it was a tree you wanted to use and then passed it around to your friends and decided you want it.

DR. CRANE: I want to correct you, for one reason: It is truly a horticultural variety or clone that has just as much standing or identity as the botanist's or forester's "variety."

MR. CALDWELL: It is a clone, and I agree with you, but a variety seems—

DR. CRANE: You are speaking from the forester's point of view.

* * * * *

MR. CALDWELL: That's why I make this other statement.

DR. CRANE: When you have got something by controlled breeding, you don't know when you have got it. That's the whole story in a nutshell.

Now, I am going to tell you about using controlled breeding. We started almond breeding in California, where we have one of the biggest commercial nut industries in the country. We started almond breeding in 1920 with the best known almonds. In the 30 years of almond breeding we have introduced two varieties. We had a panel of 125 commercial almond growers who decided on those two varieties out of more than 20,000 known controlled crosses that were made of trees that were grown to fruiting. But it took a panel of 125 commercial growers to determine whether or not these two varieties, the Jordanolo and the Harpareil, were commercial varieties.

Those two varieties were planted. The nurserymen planted them, the grower took them over, and they couldn't grow enough trees to supply the demand. These two varieties have been introduced for commercial planting now for 14 years. Of the two, one has stood the test of time, and it stands now as probably the second most important almond variety in all the United States, has been taken to foreign countries and is being extensively propagated. One of them made the grade, the Jordanolo. The Harpareil is still in the running, but it is down with the 30 or 40 varieties that are of lesser importance.

MR. CALDWELL: Can you reproduce that result?

DR. CRANE: No.

MR. CALDWELL: Then you don't know what that is or the happenstance that got it.

DR. CRANE: Certainly, because you don't know about breeding nut trees.

MR. CALDWELL: That's what I say should be learned.

DR. CRANE: In the first place, the chromosomes are so small and there are so many, that you can't identify them, and you can't tell which genes, and they have got a heterozygous population, and the variety is self-sterile and has to be cross-pollinated, so there is only one way from a horticultural standpoint by which we can do anything, and that is through clones.

DR. MacDANIELS: I think we are getting a little bit off.

DR. CRANE: We are off, way off.

DR. MacDANIELS: How to get a new variety I don't think is what we are trying to decide this evening. As I have looked at this whole field of what we are trying to do, I think we have analogies that we can point to. I think any project of this kind in nut varieties goes through various stages. The first is finding what material there is that is available that you can use. The next is the evaluation of that material to see what's worth keeping, and setting up your standards of what you are trying to get, and then from then on out perhaps breeding that sort of thing.

Now, as far as we are concerned, it seems to me the Northern Nut Growers' Association made a pretty good stab at surveying the materials available. In other words, I think an additional nut contest is not going to turn up the perfect nut. That is, we have one contest after another, and the ones that win the first prizes as the best nuts we can find are not markedly better. There is no great difference away from the average that we have had in the others.

I think that's a valuable thing to keep going along so we don't miss a trick and let anything be lost. But the next thing is to take these things that we have selected and evaluate them, and it seems tome that's exactly where we stand at the present time.

I also think that we should not in this situation get ideas that are too big. That is, if you get something that's impossible, you are licked before you start. If you have got to wait before you do anything and make a complete study of chromosomes of any one of these nut trees, 99.44 percent of the Northern Nut Growers Association might as well quit doing it. I am not capable of doing it, and Dr. McKay is probably the only one that is capable of looking at these things from that standpoint. But we have, it seems to me, to use the machinery we have and take some definite action which will be of some value within a year or perhaps two.

I agree that this idea of putting the State Vice-presidents to work is a very good thing. I think each one could if we could find the right man—take his state and divide it into two parts, and also take in groups of growers of nut trees that are members, and all the others that we can find, and get their pooled opinions on what varieties are available, together with the record of these varieties in that particular locality.

Then I think on the basis of one of the committees we have, that is, our standards and judging subcommittee, we could set that up in such a way that they could evaluate things about which there is some doubt.

But before we do that, we have got to clear the decks and adopt judging standards, standards by which we wish to work or to evaluate different varieties. I don't know whether anyone else has done more judging than I have or not, but I know I have given this a lot of attention through the years.

We had one system of judging which was worked out some years ago and was based on previous judging systems, and they went to a point where it seemed to me and to the others who were working along with me that they just didn't have any real basis in the factual situation that warranted its continuance; that is, a system which was based on percentages of kernel and penalties for empty nuts or flavor, and other things which could not be effectively measured. And they quit with that system and started out on a new tack. And to do that we got Dr. Atwood, who is head of the Department of Plant Breeding Genetics at Cornell, to go through some extensive tests which he applied as a biometrical statistical method, to find out what is the sample which will give you specific results and then to measure the qualities that give you what you want. And I think we are nearer that than before. But I think the schedules are relatively simple and haven't been used to any great extent. They need further testing.

But it seems to me that the Association as such must decide whether we want that schedule, making it an official schedule and going ahead on that basis.

Now, a judging schedule for nuts will not tell you anything about the tree; it will just tell you the characteristics of the sample. That's the first thing you want to find out: Is the nut itself intrinsically the type of thing you want to deal with? Then whether the tree bears annually or whether it alternates, or what diseases it is subject to. Those are other matters.

So I think this is a way out, or at least I suggested the plan we could go along with of putting the vice-presidents to work and setting up a committee under the title of judging and standards and try to bring out a report at the next session. It seems to me that would be right practical.

Where we go from there in production of new varieties I think should be a subject for a round table discussion sometime. I think the gentleman in forestry has a good idea. I think we will get a long way if you have proper control of the first elements of the first varieties, and from them we can build up. But it seems to me we have to be practical about things that we can do, then go ahead and do them.

DR. CRANE: Thank you, thank you.

DR. COLBY: I would like to add one point, that we must "zone" all these varieties. In a state as long as Illinois, over 400 miles long, growing conditions are different in the south than in the north. In the north we don't find that Thomas fills out very well and that's true also at Urbana in the central section of the state. Beck and Booth and some of the smaller nuts do fill out. The zones I mentioned may well run across several states where environmental conditions are similar.

I recall a little survey I made when I was honored by being president of your association several years ago, in which I tried to list all of the work that was in progress at the different national and state experiment stations, and most of those stations were carrying on some work in nut growing. I am sure that if you check that matter now, several years later, you would find that many more are carrying on investigations of that nature. They have expanded as much as their facilities will permit. For example, just the other day I visited the station at the University of New Hampshire, and there they were growing chestnut trees from seed that had been brought in from Korea. Little trees just two years from the seed were full of burs this year. Whether they are going to fill a place in New Hampshire remains to be seen. They were not as yet attacked by blight, but, of course, the trees were small, and there were no cracks in the bark as yet.

I am sure that most of the station workers know that you at Beltsville are extremely interested in testing new nuts as they become available. In cooperation with other workers it may be found that this variety is good in ~this~ zone and that variety is good in ~that~ zone. Nurserymen might well include maps of such zones in their catalogs.

DR. ANTHONY: Now that the experiences of the Northern Ohio growers has been brought up and you have mentioned many times your own experience as the Northern Nut Growers, I think the Northern Ohio group, a closely knit group, rather closely geographically related, has worked for almost twenty years, and hasn't gotten too far, and this organization has worked for 41 years and hasn't gotten too far. So that if we want to get anywhere, we must have a more closely knit organization with a better financial backing back of it and a better sense of responsibility back of it.

DR. CRANE: That's right.

DR. ANTHONY: You have mentioned the New Jersey Peach Council. We have been talking to our own Pennsylvania nut growers just as we have been talking to you today, telling them that they had a marvelous opportunity in all of these seedlings that we have been finding around the state. I think we have got them quite stirred up. But now they are considering the possibilities of organizing along the line of New Jersey Peach Council, a nut tester's council, which will be an off-shoot and part of the Pennsylvania Nut Growers Association.

Now, why have such a thing? Why have it in Pennsylvania? Why not have it as an organization of the Northern Nut Growers. The problem of varieties actually in its final analysis is a local problem. We have one area in Pennsylvania where on one side of the river it's McIntosh and the other side of the river it's Stayman. There are meteorological differences on each side of the Susquehanna River at Scranton-Wilkes Barre where the varieties shift. In the northern area we go from the northern hardwood with the beech-birch-sugar maple, into the oaks right in the state, with a third of the state in the northern hardwoods and the rest of the state in the oaks. We have no idea that any one variety of black walnuts or English walnuts or chestnuts will fill our needs any more than we know that any one apple will fill our needs, that one grape or one cherry will fill our needs, even one peach, not even the Elberta.

So it comes down to a regional problem, and for that reason I think that the state should be the logical center for your close knit organization to test your varieties.

There is another reason. I don't believe that any group of growers facing a problem of this magnitude can get very far unless you secure continuity by tying your organizations in some way to your state experiment station. I think you have got to have your continuity by making your tie-up there.

DR. CRANE: That's right.

DR. ANTHONY: I have said a number of times in our own group that one of the great disadvantages of our amateur nut growers in Pennsylvania is that most of them are 70 years old or older. That's fine for them, but it's hard on the industry, because just the time that they should be giving us the most valuable returns, they aren't there. So to secure the continuity you want, you are going to have to tie in your experiments with the experiment station. You are going to have to make a group, you are going to have to incorporate, because you are going to face the problem of propagation. You might have one good tree, and it's of no value for you, and you have got to plant it in more than one spot to know how good it is.

If the Delicious apple or Grimes Golden had appeared in our seedling blocks, we'd have thrown them away. I know we have thrown many things out at Geneva which in other places might have survived. We took a number of those and planted them in Pennsylvania and found them worthy of naming. That means you have got to propagate in more than one place and you have got to propagate in conditions where you know you have got the demand.

And all of that means that you have got to have a tight legal organization. Valuable as the Northern Nut Growers Association is, I don't think you are going to get it out of your present organization. I think you have got to find some way to condense your stuff into some tighter organization. In Pennsylvania I think it's going to be a nut tester's council, legally organized, financially responsible, tied up to the experiment station, if we can make it just as the New Jersey council is.

The New Jersey council was a success because they had the best possible tie-up between Morris Plains, 15 or 20 miles on the other side, and a good nursery in between. That's why they made a success.

The New York State Fruit Testing Association is a success because they have had continuity. Mr. King has been manager of that association for 25 years, I think, and you have a legal organization doing its own propagation where they know the material is true to name.

Use your vice-presidents all you can, use every committee that you have but you have to have something that's tighter.

DR. CRANE: Thank you. Just one comment that I want to make. You have suggested an awful big camel to get over. Now, we are trying to start. If we could just get a little start towards the end we could grow into it.

DR. ANTHONY: We have got to start.

MR. O'ROURKE: I am one of those unfortunate ones who is supposed to know everything when an inquiry comes in to the college. I happen to have the privilege of answering the nut inquiries at Michigan State College. The first thing people want to know is, "what varieties do I plant?" The second is, "Where do I buy them?" I am very sorry to say I can answer neither one of those questions at the present time satisfactorily to myself, nor to the people of the State of Michigan, and I feel that we do need action, and we need it quick in order that we can select a certain number of varieties that we can conscientiously recommend to the grower, and also a very few varieties to recommend to the nurserymen of the state so that they will propagate them and make them available to prospective customers.

MR. SLATE: I want to support Mr. Anthony's remarks that there are too many old men testing nut tree varieties.

DR. ANTHONY: Not too many, no.

MR. SLATE: And there are too many squirrels involved. If a man gets the idea that he is going to take up the nuts, by the time he accumulates a collection of nuts, when these come into bearing the squirrels get most of the nuts, and they don't seem to be very much concerned about evaluation. Then the man dies and the collection goes to pot. There must be some continuity, and as far as I can see, that will have to come through state experiment stations.

Now, just how you are going to get the experiment stations started in testing nut tree varieties, I don't really know. Many of the projects at the experiment stations are there because they are catering to the larger industries in the state, and sometimes the projects are there because somebody in an administrative position has an idea which he wishes to see developed.

Now, I would like to comment on the remark of our forester friend here, and I think he won't take offense at what I am going to say. It seems to me that the foresters are not in a good position to criticize the horticulturists. The forester's knowledge of variety improvement for a long, long time has been based upon the problem of lots of seed from certain geographical areas, and I feel sure that foresters as a class have only very, very recently become aware of the importance of the clone as we use it in horticulture.

Now, horticulturists, that is, pomologists, nut culturists, people who deal with ornamentals, have been keenly aware of the horticultural clone for a long, long time. There have been brought improvements into our cultivated plants through the hybridization of clones that all of the horticulturists are familiar with. The blueberry work done by the Department of Agriculture is probably the most striking example of this work, because it was all carried out during the lifetime of one man.

I feel that we will not get much further in searching for wild nuts. We have had contests for hickories and black walnuts, and I doubt whether we have made any very substantial increases. I feel certain, and I know there are a number here who will back me up, that future improvements, if they are to be really substantial—that is, if they are to be substantial advances over what we already have—such improvements will have to come through breeding work.

DR. McKAY: Mr. Chairman, I have been listening to these remarks, and I have been trying to think of some comment that could be made in connection with some practical suggestions that we could arrive at tonight, a starting point, perhaps, in connection with the chairman's remarks about doing something tonight at this meeting. I'd like to say that it seems to me that the thing we could probably do right now to start things off would be to have this regional committee or this group that represents a wide area, decide on, say, five varieties based on all the evidence that can be obtained as to which five would be most likely to succeed over a wide area.

Now, the chairman has commented at length on our lack of unanimity when it comes to varieties. I think most of that problem has come out of the fact that our information is all based on little, piecemeal bits of work done here and there, and it does not refer to variety testing over a wide area. Now with all due respect to Dr. Anthony's remarks about varieties being a local situation, we still have, as mentioned by the chairman, the apple situation. The varieties in the final analysis are going to be adopted over a wide area, and if our nurserymen and all our growers could know or understand that these five varieties have been selected by opinion of people that ought to know that those five varieties stand the best chance to succeed over a wide area, then we would have something definite to tie to.

The way it is now, we in our office feel that Thomas is probably the most widely adapted variety of black walnut we have, and probably the best performing variety. We are not sure, but that's our opinion. I might mention another variety, the Stabler. I think most people would agree that that is a variety that used to be thought well of, yet is no more, and so it is out of the picture. Those two varieties we have information about, based on a wide area of territory.

Now, it seems to me, coming down to something specific, what we could do here, or as soon as we can get to it, would be to have a large committee, a committee representing opinion over a wide area, come to some conclusion about the five varieties that will be the ones to test and to grow over a wide area and give our nurserymen or our growers something to tie to in the matter of selecting varieties to grow.

DR. CRANE: Thank you, Dr. McKay. There is one other comment that I want to make. I think that if we were to take a vote tonight in here, get an expression on the variety Stabler, we'd say, "Yes, it's a curious nut, it's a curiosity. Some trees sometimes bear single-lobe nuts in varying proportions. It is a fine nut when you get it, but they don't bear enough and they don't bear regularly enough. That is the criticism of the Stabler."

Yet we have nurserymen, lots of them, that are propagating Stabler and still selling them to people.

MR. McDANIEL: I know one nursery which has recently discontinued it.
That's Armstrong, way out in California.

MR. CALDWELL: Why doesn't it produce a good nut? Can you answer that question?

DR. CRANE: It does produce a good nut ~when~ it produces.

MR. CALDWELL: If it doesn't produce all the while, why doesn't it? If you can solve that—

DR. CRANE: Why didn't you grow up to a six-foot-six guy weighing 250 pounds?

MR. CALDWELL: It would be physically impossible for me to do so with my constitution, which is what I am trying to apply to the nut trees.

MR. WILKINSON: Don't condemn it over all territories[6]. At my place, the Stabler produces nuts as regular as the Thomas, and in the nursery it outsells the Thomas two to one, if not more. I have handled nut sales for Mr. Weber's orchard, one of the largest black walnut orchards in the United States. When the people come there we will crack a Stabler walnut to make a customer out of them, and we have to get on to something else to keep them from buying all the Stablers first. And if I were planting a hundred walnut trees today, the majority of them would be Stabler. They have been bearing since 1918 when I started producing Stabler walnuts.

[6] The territory giving best reports on Stabler lies along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers from about Cincinnati to no farther south than Memphis.—J.C.McD.

DR. CRANE: That's what we are talking about tonight.

MR. CALDWELL: Yet your committee throws the thing out.

MR. CHASE: I'd like to say a few words. First off, I am in agreement with the idea of some sort of a regional testing set-up.

Now here we are getting into discussion about individual varieties, and that is not the purpose of this, as I understand, but all of you gentlemen have been propagating the various varieties simply because one has become available to you at a certain time, and you have grafted it. Our committee on varieties, of which I am a member, probably should be criticized, because we have not gathered that information from the folks who have grafted trees, and they are scattered over the region. We don't need the regional set-up, it's already set up. In other words, if we have varieties to be tested, we could have selected members in our group to graft it, if they do not already have it grafted. In a few years we can get some pretty definite information on a few varieties.

Now, in 1938, in our work we recognized the advisability of quickly doing something about the 100-and-some varieties existing in the proceedings, and finally we have culled that down to, I think, 43, which, on the basis of nut characteristics only, are very close together. Now, we started out in 1938 and established four or five test plantings containing the first ten varieties. Ten trees of ten varieties, a hundred trees in the planting. It took quite an area.

Since that time we have set out variety test plantings of 43 varieties scattered over seven states at various geographical locations within the seven states.

MR. KINTZEL: How many trees do you have in a planting now?

MR. CHASE: Twenty-five now. Twenty-five of five varieties. This work is being carried on at the state experiment stations in the Tennessee Valley. In fact, they have become more and more interested in the testing program which we have been trying to get them interested in, and we hope to have some information for our region on some of these varieties, the better varieties as we consider them.

But back to this problem. I think it is very simple to set out. I think the Varieties Committee—I believe Dr. Crane is chairman—

DR. MacDANIELS: You are chairman.

MR. CHASE: No. It has a job on its hands: first to find out what our members have. Certainly they are spread over the region we are interested in, aren't they? Well, it simply becomes a secretary's job to canvass our membership to find out which varieties we have, so that the Varieties Committee can go to work.

Let's be realistic. We are not going to influence all the experiment stations to do this work. It is not going to be practicable for them. They probably would very much like to do it, but it's not in the picture, as I see it now. Therefore, we are not going to wait, as our forester would have us wait, until we breed one. Let's get these good ones that we have got and cull them out so Dr. Crane can answer a letter without having a guilty conscience.

DR. CRANE: That's right. Folks, I want to make one comment on Mr. Chase's remarks—also Mr. Slate's remarks, about tying this work up to the experiment stations. There is one thing that, in my experience, we can't place too much dependence on. Of course, in the Department of Agriculture our main interests that we are likely to contend with are our four major nut industries in the country. That is pecans, Persian walnuts, filberts and almonds. In the case of those, we can get very little help from the experiment stations, with the possible exception of California.

MR. CORSAN: There is lots of truth in that.

DR. CRANE: They haven't got the interest in it. They haven't got the money, they haven't got the support. They depend more on the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Well, the Department of Agriculture can't carry it. Hence, it comes back to growers. The grower organizations, even in the great state of California, with all their great wealth and abundance, go to the California experiment stations more than to any other experiment stations in the United States. But the commercial growers out there have already set up organizations for the testing of these varieties and for trial plantings. You can't come back to the experiment stations and just as has been pointed out, many of the experiment stations have only one or two or, at most, three different kinds of nuts of their own. They have got to go out just the same as we do ~with the growers~; we co-operate with them. And we have already got a lot of these experimental plantings. There is Sterling Smith with—I have forgotten how many he said—60 walnut varieties, and Mr. Shessler with a hundred, there in Ohio.

I'd like to know from Sterling Smith and Mr. Shessler which are the best five walnut varieties.

MR. KINTZEL: In that section?

DR. CRANE: In that section, that's what I want to know.

MR. CORSAN: That's what we are here for tonight. Let us talk it over.

MR. WEBER: Put the question to him, Dr. Crane, and let him tell you what he thinks to be his best five. Put him on the spot right now.

DR. CRANE: That would be just a waste of time, because that would be his opinion. It's just like what Mr. Wilkinson says, that if he were planting a hundred walnut trees they would be Stablers.

MR. WEBER: In his particular locality.

MR. CORSAN: And he may be quite right in that locality. I am not going to dispute it.

DR. CRANE: But we want to know how some other folks agree with him and study this situation over and find out why Stabler was doing its stuff right there.

MR. CALDWELL: That's what I asked you.

DR. CRANE: And how much evidence did he base his conclusion on? That's what we have got to discover.

MR. CORSAN: I base my conclusion on the experiment station that put out the Redhaven peaches. Dr. George Slate here has made a very big point, and it went to pot. Those words there are what we have got to be careful about, that our institution doesn't go to pot. I have started affairs that went with a fury, and when I let go of them, they just went to pot.

Take Michigan State College's Bird Sanctuary, the W. K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary. What is it now? A colorless affair. It's gone to pot, and we want to see that the nut growers don't allow ~their~ institutions to go to pot.

DR. CRANE: That's right: You hit the nail on the head, there, but it's up to the nut growers to see that they don't. And how many experiment stations or their actions have been influenced by the Northern Nut Growers Association?

MR. CORSAN: I have built upon the experience of J. F. Jones and Neilson and Professor Slate and all of them. Now, here is what I did. I picked out a section of land that floods every spring, about four times the width of this room and has sometimes eight feet of water. Now, nobody is going to build houses on that and tear my nut trees down. They are there forever, and it will always be a nut haven, and nobody will be able to destroy it. Now I have got to be careful to see that it doesn't go to pot, as Professor Slate said, by selecting some brains to succeed me, to carry on. Is that right, Professor Slate?

PROFESSOR SLATE: (Nods.)

MR. SILVIS: We can't spend too much time thinking about the atomic bomb. We can't think too much about getting an organization to start this, it just takes somebody to go ahead and do it. We don't need experiment stations to develop the nut, either. The nut was here a long time before the experiment station was ever developed.

I wrote in a letter here two or three or maybe four years ago—I think it was after the Norris meeting, to every vice-president in NNGA that commercial possibilities of a nut must first be apparent before any experiment station is interested, because then money is involved, capital has been invested. Before capital can be invested must come coordination. Coordination is labor. That's grafting or flowering, or whatever you want to call it—back-breaking exercise.

I still think we have the organization here. We don't need to argue about any more organization. We have organization right here in our own State Vice-presidents. I tried to bring that out, the suggestion as to the fact that I thought maybe the State Vice-president would serve on a perpetual committee, if he lived into perpetuity, to get these zones within his state. If Illinois is 400 miles long and he has 16 zones of climate, let him get 16 plantings of the same kind of a nut in those 16 zones. The same way with Texas, the same way with Montana or Ohio.

MR. SHERMAN: I think both Mr. Stoke and Mr. Davidson thought that it might be a good idea to give somebody a job instead of an honorary position by naming a State vice-president for that sort of a job. Now, we have got to start somewhere, and that would be a good place to start: give somebody something to do, like some of these other dead people that will feed these nuts that Corsan was telling us about this afternoon.

But the commercial possibilities are always apparent. You can subsidize them, you know. If you can get enough money behind it, you can subsidize it. I think our problem still is the same as it was before: We are still trying to find out what the other guy has that's better than our own. And if we have got five nuts that are any good, I'd like to know about them myself.

DR. CRANK: That's right.

MR. SILVIS: I will make this statement in favor of the Homeland black walnut—if we are on black walnuts. I came in a little late on account of the mud here. The Homeland is growing in Massillon, and Mr. Stoke sent me the scions. All it did was produce staminate bloom. I gave some of the wood to John Gerstenmaier in Massillon. It is doing very well.

I also favor the Thomas black walnut, and I think the hickories and everything else have commercial possibilities. Just let somebody go ahead and correlate these factors. Life is very short. I have copies of these letters, four letters out of 50 or 60 that I prepared.

DR. CRANE: Mr. Jay Smith. We are going to have to limit this to not over three minutes' time.

MR. JAY SMITH: My experience is somewhat limited. I have a few seedling trees that are good, and I have a few named varieties that seem to be good. I just want to point out one reason why we should have a number of varieties. One of my choice varieties in my back yard has five nuts on it this year, and it has produced a good crop other years. And the answer seems to be that the pollen came out during a period of very rainy weather and the tree did not fertilize. Now, other trees apparently blossomed before or after, mostly after, but this one was a rather early blooming tree, and I have more nuts on other types of trees.

One of my good seedling trees has very few nuts on this year. Possibly that might be for a similar reason. So regardless of how good these varieties may be, we must have several varieties. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

I have some good filberts that came from Geneva, and they have had trouble with wood damage due to the beetles laying eggs in the wood, and the beetles may possibly have come from nearby willows. And I have had some of the willow growing, too, because I thought it looked nice. Now I have cut down all of the willow, and there is some birch in the neighborhood, and I understand the birch harbors this same thing, some variety of Agrilus beetle,[7] and we have a lot of angles to work on in order to get rid of our drawbacks. And we have the matters of season and soil and elevation. It's quite a big problem.

[7] Agrilus anxius Gory, the bronze birch borer.

DR. CRANE: It ~is~ a big problem, but we will never settle it the way we are going. We have got to do better.

MR. STOKE: I don't know whether I have anything that is really pertinent to say. The thought I had in mind should have come sooner. That is: Why are we growing nuts? There are two angles from which we can approach that, two natural angles. Here is the angle of the amateur that wants to grow nuts to eat. After all, that's what I suppose they are for. There is the commercial grower who wants to grow them to make a profit, and I think we should approach our subject, evaluation of nuts, from either one of those two angles, or work along two different channels. I think that's very necessary.

You take the Elberta peach. If you want a peach in your back yard, you are not going to plant Elberta peaches to eat. If you want to make a commercial success, you are going to plant the Elberta, if you know anything about it. Are we commercial nut growers, or do we grow them for home consumption? Go downstairs and look at the nuts we judged last year and the eye appeal of some that didn't rate at all would sell those nuts ahead of the prize winner. But if you want to grow them to eat, those three prize winners are the best nuts down there.

And if we thrash over this field, I think we have got a definite idea of what we are after, and I think we should have had that to start with.

DR. CRANE: That's right, and there is one other point of view, too. There is a third reason for growing nut trees. That is simply for the ornamental value. That hasn't been dealt with.

MR. WELLMAN: I'd just like to ask a question. There has been some reference to apples here. I don't know very much about it, but I understand that the American Pomological Society got out a list of apples nearly a century ago, which they have kept changing and adding to and subtracting from over all of that time. Is there any analogy there that would help us in anything we can do? They made mistakes and put apples on there that they are sorry they put on and they have had to take off. People don't use those varieties in one part or another part of the country for some reason. Is there any reason why we shouldn't follow some suggestion such as that, stick our necks out and go ahead?

DR. CRANE: That is right, no reason in the world why you can't.

MR. SHERMAN: I'd like to do some commenting. You are doing here tonight what you have done at the last meeting. You have talked varieties. I thought the purpose of that was to get a committee appointed some way, some organization that will say, "Here are certain varieties that should be tested. Make arrangements to propagate those varieties and have them tested."

I made a demonstration right downstairs here; some of you witnessed it. You have got some black walnuts that you are cracking. I went out to the car and got some that would crack in four nice quarters that laid out. I tried it again. Sure, they cracked and cracked good. Where can I get some trees? There are a lot of you right here who would take them just that quick (snapping fingers), take them home and test them.

This meeting was to get an organization or discuss a means of getting an organization that will get those trees propagated and spread out for testing. Now, I think it's just as simple as A, B, C. It's a prolonged job. You have got to have an organization that's going to perpetuate itself for the next century, because if you start that organization right it will be here a hundred years from now, and you will be just as busy a hundred years from now as you are right now.

What that committee has got to be, whether it is a statewide or a nationwide, Northern Nut Growers or Pennsylvania Nut Growers or Ohio Nut Growers, is a committee of five—I will say five, you can make it 10 or 15—that will say, "Now, for Ohio here are ten varieties that we think should be tested. Get 50 trees of each of those ten propagated and spread out over Ohio and find out where they will grow." That will apply for some of Western Pennsylvania, too. It isn't just state lines, understand, but the main thing is to get that variety tested before your nurseryman is spreading it all over everywhere.

And how can you get it tested? You have got to have some trees propagated, and you have got to have some nurseryman who knows about the propagation. And I will say a lot of you nurserymen, and there are a lot of you here, take it or leave it, don't know how to propagate a decent black walnut tree. I have had them sent to me with a 6-inch sprout growing in the top of a club. I have had others two years old with a nice whip five feet high, one-year-old growth. You have got to have good trees. You have got to have a nurseryman who knows how to propagate those ten and send them out.

Now, the next meeting was to find out what sort of an organization you have got to have to get that done, not talk about a Stabler, whether this is good or that is good. That's what you have been doing for 40 years.

MR. SLATE: It takes more than a committee, it takes land, labor, tools, supervisory people.

MR. SHERMAN: I can point to 25 members that will take ten varieties that they will test—and pay for them.

MR. O'ROURKE: I would like to say, are we going to wait until we test all of those varieties? We have no information to answer all those letters that are coming in. We want something, not tomorrow, we want something today, that we can give them, information which, at least to the best of our knowledge of today is accurate. And the only way we can get that accurate information is to get a committee together in each region.

MR. SHERMAN: That won't take care of the future. That will answer our present questions to the best of our knowledge, but we want an organization that will take care of the future.

DR. CRANE: There is one other thing that I should mention. We in the Department of Agriculture have released a number of new varieties. We have got others coming on, not only your chestnuts, but filberts and others, pecans, and so on. But we haven't got any organization in any way, shape or form. We can put these out with the growers who test them, but gee whiz, we have put them out and put them out; and look what kind of information we get. We haven't got facilities or the money or anything else to follow up. We have got to have some organization some way, somehow, that could take this material and test it, at least give some idea as to how it performed.

Now, then, the question is what kind of an organization? If the Northern Nut Growers is not the one that should do it, what kind of an organization can be effective to do it?

MR. CORSAN: Now I'd just like to say one more thing tonight. That chestnut blight, I honestly believe, was a godsend to this country. I can remember way back when I'd go into a store and buy a lot of these Paragon chestnuts in New York City in the finest grocery store, and they were crammed full of weevils. Now, the chestnut blight came, and it has about annihilated the weevil, because there was no chestnut to weevil in. And I would like to have some report about the weevil.

MR. WILSON: They are in Georgia.

MR. McDANIEL: They are in Virginia and Indiana.

DR. MacDANIELS: Mr. Chairman, I suppose I should have the chair. This is a committee of the whole.

DR. CRANE: That's right.

DR. MacDANIELS: I have a right to speak,

DR. CRANE: That's right.

DR. MacDANIELS: I say we have always come down to the point, here we are, where do we go from here and what do we do next? There, in a word, "Here we are." Lots of discussion, much of it irrelevant. I will just propose, along the lines I spoke before, that what comes out of this is that We recommend to the incoming president to organize a survey and testing campaign along the lines that seem to meet with some agreement; namely, getting the state vice-presidents busy in finding out the regional evaluation of different varieties.

Supposing we try black walnuts; just one species for this year, and that he organize his state according to zones and come up with that information with regard to that state.

And the other thing would be that these findings be sent to the committee. We have a committee on surveys and one on judging and standards, and let that be compiled by them jointly or set up in some way that would seem to be effective and come up next year with this overall evaluation along those lines.

I'd make that motion.

DR. COLBY: Second the motion.

DR. MacDANIELS: Any discussions?

DR. ANTHONY: In Pennsylvania two of us have worked full time for a year, and I am not sure we'd be able to evaluate the black walnut yet.

DR. CRANE: We are not evaluating the black walnut, though.

DR. ANTHONY: You are asking one man to do that, your vice-president.

DR. CRANE: He is to appoint a committee.

DR. MacDANIELS: Any way he chooses to mark them out.

DR. ANTHONY: He is organizing a nut tester association.

DR. MacDANIELS: No, an evaluation association. As I would say, you have the Ohio Association already formed; that would be their problem to come up with an answer for their state. We have the Pennsylvania organization already organized. They will come up with some sort of evaluation: No. 1, Thomas, No. 2, whatever it is, No. 3, whatever it is. Now, in your other states we don't have an organization; do it some other way. I don't care how they do it.

DR. CRANE: There are some others in these other states, too, that are already formed.

Any other discussion?

(Whereupon, a vote on the motion was called for, and it was carried unanimously.)

MR. SILVIS: Just one thing. It was made with the express purpose that we start maybe just the black walnut. At the same time in certain areas you may as well raise a hickory or a Persian right along with the black walnut, or the filbert.

MR. McDANIEL: No objection, but this year we are surveying the black walnut named varieties only.

MR. SALZER: I am just a buck private in the rear rank, but we have been having little local meetings in New York, and they appointed me vice-president for the State of New York, the Empire State, and here Ohio has their organization, Pennsylvania has their organization. What am I going to do? I can work Western New York, but I have got to have someone to help me in Eastern New York.

DR. MacDANIELS: Take the membership list and take the men who can do it.

DR. CRANE: There are a lot of good men in Eastern New York.

Now, if there isn't anything else, I will turn the meeting back to Dr.
MacDaniels.

DR. MacDANIELS: Thank you, Dr. Crane. I think these talks are good for the soul. We can let our hair down and know what we all think. And I do think it's important that we do make some progress on this particular problem. I think this is one way to do it. There may be a half dozen ways and other ways better, but at least you have to agree on something and go on from there.

Now, the meeting in the morning begins at nine o'clock, the full program.

If there is no further business, then, this session is adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 10 o'clock, p.m., the meeting was adjourned, to reconvene at 9 o'clock, a. m. the following day, August 29, 1950.)