Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting / Washington D.C. September 26, 27 and 28 1923

by Unknown

REPORT OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE

By Willard G. Bixby

MR. BIXBY: The finance committee asks the association to instruct the secretary in the printing of the next report to endeavor to reduce the size to one-half of the present report.

(Adopted by the convention).

MR. BIXBY: I move as an amendment to Article Two of the By-Laws, that annual membership be $3, or $5 including a year's subscription to the Journal. Contributing members to pay $10, this including a year's subscription to the Journal.

(Motion seconded and adopted by the convention, and the committee on
Incorporation discharged with the thanks of the association).

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I have nearly overlooked the fact that the organization must now have a corporate seal, with an appropriate inscription. An appropriate inscription would be "The Northern Nut Growers' Association, Incorporated." All such seals generally carry some appropriate design, and there are various ones to be had. I move that a committee of three be appointed to determine upon the design of this seal, and then later, if the chairman of the committee will send the design to me, I will have the seal made and send it to the association.

(Motion seconded and adopted, and Dr. Deming, Mr. Bixby, and Dr. Morris appointed as committee by the president).

After considerable discussion New York City was selected as the place for the next convention and the dates Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, September 3rd, 4th and 5th, 1924.

A vote of thanks to the president, Mr. James S. McGlennon, was adopted. The secretary was also instructed to write to Mrs. Hutt expressing the thanks of the convention for her address.

Dr. Oswald Schreiner of the Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Dept. of
Agriculture was then introduced and spoke as follows:

In the successful growing of pecan trees, the proper care of the orchard is of enormous importance. (To illustrate this point, slides were shown of a good orchard and a poor orchard on a rather thin soil in the Coastal Plain Region. In the good orchard, the trees had been well cared for, the soil fertilized by the growing of legumes and cover crops plowed under; in the poor orchard, the trees had been neglected and the soil impoverished by the continuous growing of cultivated crops, such as cotton and corn. The two views very clearly showed which orchard was on a paying basis and likely to prove a profitable investment). It is needless to say that the crop from such a poor, intercropped orchard would be meagre and unprofitable until the methods were changed. The growing of legumes to furnish humus, and even the growing of winter cover crops, such as rye, to be plowed under in the spring, cannot be too strongly recommended as soil improvers.

When nut trees are grown in orchards, they can no longer be considered as forest trees to be left to take care of themselves until a rich harvest of nuts is produced, but must be cared for just as much as any other fruit tree or cultivated crop or the harvest of nuts will never be forthcoming.

The fertilizing of nut trees, however, offers more difficulties than do the annual crops. Experiments on this subject have been few and the information obtainable is rather meagre. Consequently, a few years ago, the Office of Soil Fertility Investigation, which is conducting fertilizer investigations on a large number of the annual crops grown on the prominent soil types or soil regions of the United States, started, in co-operation with the Office of Horticultural Investigations of the Bureau of Plant Industry, a number of fertilizer experiments on pecan orchards, involving a study of several soil types suitable for nut production and attempting to ascertain the proper fertilizer requirements for the pecan on these soils. While these experiments have been running only five years, which in point of time is very small in the life of a pecan tree, yet the different fertilizers employed already show some highly interesting results, sufficient to indicate that certain fertilizer applications undoubtedly influence the growth of the tree, its productiveness, and quality of the nut produced.

The experimental fertilizer mixtures are all prepared here in Washington in a fertilizer-mixing plant on the department's Arlington Farm, on the Virginia side of the river. The fertilizer house is well stocked with all of the various fertilizer substances used in agriculture, ready for mixing; nitrate of soda from Chili, potash from France and Germany, and our own far western states; cottonseed meal from the South, tankage and dried blood from the slaughter houses of Chicago and Omaha, Tennessee or Florida phosphates, and acid phosphate, ammonium sulfate from the coke ovens of Pennsylvania, Thomas slag from England, in short, all sorts of commercial materials from near and remote sources, for study and use in fertilizers.

(Slides were then shown of the exterior and interior of the plant where literally thousands of experimental fertilizer mixtures are prepared to study the requirements of the various soils and crops, and are then shipped in freight cars to the various experiment places. Two slides showing the application of fertilizer in a large orchard where tractors are employed in carrying on the various cultural operations and also in a small orchard where hand labor is employed, were also shown).

The scheme of fertilizer experimentation adopted in this work is rather complete and so planned as to include fertilizers carrying the principal fertilizer constituents, phosphate, ammonia and potash, singly, in combinations of two elements, and in combinations of three elements, in various proportions in a regularly graded manner. The following scheme illustrates these mixtures of different analyses, the first figure denoting the percentage of phosphate, the second the percentage of ammonia, and the third the percentage of potash in the fertilizer. The various mixtures are numbered consecutively.

1
—-
20-0-0
2 3
—- —-
16-0-4 16-4-0
4 5 6
—- —- —-
12-0-8 12-4-4 12-8-0
7 8 9 10
—- —- —- —-
8-0-12 8-4-8 8-8-4 8-12-0
11 12 13 14 15
—- —- —- —- —-
4-0-16 4-4-12 4-8-8 4-12-4 4-16-0
16 17 18 19 20 21
—- —- —- —- —- —-
0-0-20 0-4-16 0-8-12 0-12-8 0-16-4 0-20-0

It is quite apparent that in this scheme the entire field of fertilizer formulas is covered in a regular way. In addition to this formula plan other experiments are also under way to determine the influence of the different fertilizing materials, carrying the phosphate, ammonia and potash, and the influence of lime, rock phosphate, various green manuring crops, etc. The experiments are carried out in commercial orchards on several soil types and in several localities.

While the years the experiments have been running are yet too few for any final conclusions, and the details too numerous to present in a brief sketch here, there have nevertheless been some very interesting results from the use of fertilizers which is readily shown by a few lantern slides. Here is, for instance, a view of a fertilized and an unfertilized section of one of our experiments in Georgia. The views were obtained in the fall, and one could tell at a glance, not only that the unfertilized trees were not as large, but also quite strikingly that they had nearly lost all of their foliage, whereas the trees on the fertilized section were still in full foliage, thus presenting a very strong contrast. The effect of fertilizers on the foliage is shown also in a series of slides of representative trees, from one of our experiments in Louisiana, likewise taken in the fall. The first tree had not been fertilized, the second had been fertilized with phosphate and the third with potash. The one fertilized with phosphate appeared slightly larger, but it can again be observed that all three trees were, at the time the picture was taken, nearly three-fourths defoliated. The next two trees from the same experiment, fertilized respectively with a nitrogenous fertilizer and with a complete fertilizer, and photographed at the same time, show the influence of these fertilizers strikingly in that they are still in complete foliage, as well as showing a more vigorous growth. Three slides of fertilized and unfertilized trees from still different experiments all show the fuller foliage and better branching of the fertilized trees, especially those fertilized with the nitrogenous fertilizers or the complete fertilizers.

The yields of these trees cannot here be taken up but, in general, these fertilized trees came into bearing earlier and have yielded double and treble the number of nuts produced by the unfertilized trees.

(In conclusion, there was shown a slide of the yield of nuts from an experimental tract of a commercial orchard of about 20 acres, in which the yield from a fertilized acre was compared with the yield from an unfertilized acre. It was noted that the unfertilized acre gave a yield of approximately two barrels, whereas the fertilized acre gave an increase of two bushel baskets more than the unfertilized.)

Dr. W. E. Safford, Botanist, Bureau of Plant Industry, then spoke on the
Use of Nuts by the Aboriginal Americans.

DR. SAFFORD: My interest in nuts has been confined almost entirely to those of American origin. For a good many years, I have been studying the plants, and plant products, utilized for food, and for other purposes, by the aboriginal Americans, before the arrival in this hemisphere of Columbus and his companions.

In this connection, there is a striking contrast between the American Indians and the primitive Polynesians. The chief economic plants encountered by early explorers on the islands of the Pacific Ocean were identical with well known Asiatic species. Coconuts, breadfruit, taro, sugar cane, yams and bananas, the most important food staples of the Polynesians, had been known to the Old World for centuries before the Pacific Islands were visited by Europeans; the shrub, from the bark of which the Polynesians made their tapa cloth, was identical with the paper mulberry of China and Japan; and the principal screwpine, or Pandanus, from which the Polynesians made their mats, was a well-known species of southern Asia. A number of these plants had even carried their Asiatic names with them to Polynesia. The Polynesian language itself, with its varied dialects, spoken in Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, Easter Island and on other island groups, can be traced without difficulty to the Malay Archipelago, the cradle of the Polynesian race.

In America, on the other hand, every cultivated plant encountered by Columbus and his companions was new. Not a single Old World food crop had found its way to our hemisphere before the Discovery; not a grain of wheat, rye, oats, or barley; no peas, cabbage, beets, turnips, watermelon, musk-melon, egg-plant, or other Old World vegetable; no apple, quince, pear, peach, plum, orange, lemon, mango, or other Old World fruit, had reached America. Even the cotton which was encountered in the West Indies by Columbus the very morning after the Discovery, proved to be a distinct species and could not be made to hybridize with Old World cottons. Conversely, no American cultivated plants; no maize, no beans, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes; no cacao (from which chocolate is made); no pine-apples, avocadoes, custard apples nor guavas; no Brazil nuts, pecans, or hickory nuts; nor any other American food staple had found their way to the Old World; even the beeches, chestnuts, oaks, and maples were distinct; and the same is true of the New World ground nuts and the grapes, which were the parent species of our delicious American varieties. Quite unlike anything in the Old World were such cultivated plants as the Cactaceae, the capsicum peppers, and the manioc from which cassava is made.

In Polynesia the evidence thus offered by cultivated plants points to the spread of Asiatic culture eastward across the Pacific, while the peculiarities of the cultivated plants of America point to its isolation from all the rest of the world; an isolation which is further established by a radical dissimilarity of all American languages from Old World linguistic stocks. In no language of the New World, for example, is there a vestige of Hebrew, which would support the cherished theory of the migration to this continent of the lost tribes of Israel; nor is there a suggestion of any linguistic element to indicate connection with the Chinese, nor any relationship between the builders of the American pyramids and those of Egypt.

There are many distinct groups of American languages. Very often the language of a tribe is quite unlike that of its nearest neighbors; while at the same time it may resemble the languages of tribes quite remote. This fact indicates former segregation of the various groups speaking the unlike languages and a common ancestry or close association of the tribes speaking the allied dialects. As examples, I might mention the Quichua Indians of Peru, whose language is very unlike the languages spoken by the Arawak and Carib Indians to their northward and, at the same time, quite distinct from the languages of their Brazilian neighbors to the eastward. The Aztecs of Mexico spoke a language differing radically in structure as well as in vocabulary from the Maya language of their Yucatan neighbors; yet there is unquestionably a relationship between the Aztecs and a number of very distant tribes, shown by resemblances of their languages, as in the case of the Shoshone Indians of the northern United States and the Nuhuatl tribes of Salvador and Costa Rica. In the same way, the Algonquian dialects, which differ greatly from those of the Iroquoian, show a close relationship between very widely scattered tribes in North America, from North Carolina to Quebec. Such resemblances and radical differences point to a very remote and long-continued segregation which permitted the independent formation of distinct linguistic stocks; while the antiquity of man in America, both north and south of the equator, is further attested by the development of such a cultivated and highly specialized food staple as maize, whose ancestral prototype we have sought in vain. Its endless varieties, fitted for widely diverse conditions of soil and climate, also point to a long period of cultivation in dissimilar culture-areas, which enabled them to adapt themselves to conditions very different from those of the original stock from which they sprang.

All this evidence points to the peopling of this continent at a very remote time, perhaps as far back as the close of the Glacial Epoch; and it also indicates that the early progenitors of our Indian tribes had left their original homes in the Old World before any of the linguistic Old-World stocks had taken shape; before Sanscrit was Sanscrit; before the languages of China or any other Asiatic people had become established; and just as in this hemisphere the natives developed their own languages from the most primitive elements of speech, so most certainly did they develop their agriculture from the wild plants of the fields, the swamps, the hillsides, and the forests. In both respects, as I have already pointed out, they differed from the Polynesians who brought with them to their island homes not only their language but their agriculture, from the cradle of their race in the Malay Archipelago; cuttings of seedless breadfruit and of sugarcane, fleshy roots of taro and yams; even trees, like the Indian almond and the candlenut.

Here I would like to point out to the members of the Nut Growers' Association the chief difference between nuts and other food staples. Nearly all of our cultivated vegetables, including maize, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and pumpkins, are annuals, sensitive to frost, which must be raised from seed each year, and which differ so greatly from the primitive plants from which they came that their ancestral forms cannot be definitely determined. Most of these vegetables are in all probability of hybrid origin, the result of cross pollination and selection. In the case of our native nuts the conditions are quite different. We know the original ancestor of the pecan, our hickories and our walnuts. The fine varieties now cultivated are not hybrids but have been selected from wild trees. In connection with nuts I would also point out that in all probability they were the most important food-staple of primitive man, as well as of his simian ancestors. It required no great intelligence to gather them or to store them after the fashion followed by squirrels. Intelligence, however, is required to plant nuts and to transplant nut trees. Still greater intelligence is involved in the process of preparing certain nuts for food. A delicious creamy emulsion, for instance, was prepared by the Virginian Indians from hickory nuts. Cracking them and removing the kernels was too long and tedious an operation; so they developed a method of gathering them in quantities and crushing them in a hollowed log, together with water, pounding them to a paste and then straining out the fragments of shells through a basket sieve. The milky fluid which was thus formed was allowed to stand until the thick creamy substance separated from the water. The water was then poured off, and the delicious cream which remained was used as a component of various dishes. This substance was called by the Virginian Algonkian Indians "Pawcohiccora," a word which has been abbreviated and modified to "Hickory," the name by which we now designate not only the nuts, but the tree and its wood.

It is interesting to note that a similar creamy or butter-like substance was derived by a similar process from various palm nuts in Central and South America. Cieza de Leon describes such a process in his Chronicle of Peru, in connection with a nut which was described as Cocos butyraceæ, but which was not a true Cocos, or coconut. Long before the discovery of America, a somewhat similar process was used in the Nicobar Islands for extracting a creamy substance from the grated kernel of the true coconut, Cocos nucifera, which in early times was called Nux indica. This process is still followed throughout Polynesia. Some of the most savory dishes of the Samoans and the natives of Guam are enriched and flavored with this coconut cream, which is a substance quite distinct from the water, or so-called milk, contained in the hollow kernel of the nut, which is so commonly used for drinking.

Coming back to America, I would call attention to the value of some of our native pine nuts and acorns as food staples. Certain Indian tribes of the Southwest live upon pine nuts at certain seasons when they are ripe. Dr. C. Hart Merriam has told of the utilization of acorns by various tribes of Indians in a beautifully illustrated article published in the National Geographic Magazine, 1918, entitled "The Acorn, a Possibly Neglected Source of Food." "To the native Indians of California," he says, "the acorn is, and always has been, the staff of life, furnishing the material for their daily mush and bread." He describes the process of gathering and storing them, shelling, drying, grinding the kernels, leaching out the bitter tannic acid, and preparing the acorn meal in various ways for food. In eastern North America, several species of acorns were somewhat similarly used, including those of the live oaks of our southern states. The Spaniards of Florida sometimes toasted them and used them as a substitute for chocolate or coffee. Chinkapins were used for food by the earliest English colonists. They are mentioned by Herriot, the historian of Sir Walter Raleigh's colony at Roanoke. In addition to these, the early colonists learned to eat the so-called "water-chinkapins", which are fruits of the beautiful golden-flowered American lotus, Nelumbo lutea, a plant closely allied to the sacred lotus of India, China and Japan, whose nuts are even now used as a food staple. The split kernels of the latter may be bought in the Chinese shops on Pennsylvania Avenue in this city. The rootstocks of both the American and the Oriental lotus are also used for food. They resemble bananas joined together end to end, with several hollow longitudinal tubes running through them.

Before I close, I should like to call attention to a plant, endemic in eastern North America, whose tubers were called "ground-nuts," or "Indian potatoes" by the early colonists. The latter name caused the plant to be mistaken by certain early writers for the white potato, which was unknown in North America in early colonial days, but which was confused with the ground nut on account of the resemblance of the descriptions of the two plants. The white potato, Solanum tuberosum, was discovered in the Andes of South America by Cieza de Leon; it was quite unknown in North America or in the West Indies in the days of Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, both of whom have erroneously been given the credit of introducing the potato into England. The "potato" which they observed in the West Indies was not Solanum tuberosum, which we now call the "white potato" or "Irish potato," but a very distinct plant, Ipomoea batatas, which we now call the "sweet potato," but which in early days was known as the batata or potato. The error which has become widely spread, can be traced to John Gerarde, the first author to publish an illustration of Solanum tuberosum. In his celebrated Herball he declares that the potatoes figured by him were grown in his garden from tubers which came from "Virginia, or Norembega." It is quite certain that this statement was untrue, and that, as certain English writers have already suggested, Gerard "wished to mystify his readers." Whatever may have been his motive, the error became widely spread. Even Thomas Jefferson was led to believe that Solanum tuberosum was encountered in Virginia by the early colonists, and Schoolcraft declared that its tubers were gathered wild in the woods like other wild roots. The Indian potato of the early colonists is still abundant in "moist and marish grounds," as described by Herriot. It is a tuber-bearing plant of the bean family, and is known botanically as Glycine apios.

But I fear my talk has become too discursive, in turning from nuts to ground nuts, and from ground nuts to potatoes; but the subject, bearing as it does on the origin and history of cultivated plants, is one which has great attraction for me, and I hope it may have been of interest to the members of this association.

Professor C. P. Close, Pomologist, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, spoke as follows:

MR. CLOSE: The subject I had intended to speak on was "Extension Work in Nut Growing." Many of you know that I am putting in most of my time on the fruit end of extension work, but I am also doing some extension nut work. I was hoping that there would be representatives from many of the states here, because I wanted to encourage them to get in touch with the state extension men, to work up interest in nut culture.

My talk will be very brief, but I would like to mention that very few of the states as yet are doing extension work with nuts, especially in the North. Some work is being done with pecans in the South.

I have been astounded in talking with the landscape men in the North to find that they have not considered nut trees as ornamental trees. But after I mentioned that a walnut or a hickory or a pecan tree is an ornamental tree, and just as much so as the elm, the oak, or the maple, they thought it would be a good idea to use them and agreed to recommend the use of nut trees as shade, lawn and roadside trees. Then I suggested the filbert for clump planting as an ornamental. I hope in the future that nut trees and filberts will be used more extensively by the landscape extension men in their work throughout the country.

In most of the states there are fruit extension specialists but only an occasional landscape extension specialist; so I try to interest the fruit men in the planting of nut trees, and a few of them are doing this, particularly in Indiana, where the fruit extension specialist has been interested in having pecan and English walnut trees planted in school yards. It seems difficult to get people to comprehend and practice nut tree growing and to understand the various uses of nut trees. We can judge from the small audience at this meeting that there are not enough people interested in nut growing. In my journey throughout the country I occasionally run across men interested in growing a few nut trees, and I try to induce them to become members of this association; but it seems to be a hard thing to do.

A few days ago I called on a man in New Jersey who said he would have twenty bushels of hickory nuts and two or three bushels of English walnuts if the squirrels did not take them. He is up against a state law which protects the squirrels but does not protect him.

I wish we could send out word with you to the states to get at least a few people interested in nut culture, and have them write to the agricultural colleges and the experiment stations and arouse some interest along this line at those institutions, not only among the fruit extension men and the teachers, but also among the landscape men as well. There ought to be more interest taken in this work at our colleges and universities, and nut culture courses ought to be organized. The foresters ought to be induced to use nut trees wherever possible.

That is all of the time I care to take at present, Mr. President, but I wish to say that if there is any way of arousing interest in the states, I would be glad to carry the word from Washington and to push it just as hard as possible.

Hon. W. S. Linton, Saginaw, Michigan, spoke on "Roadside Planting vs.
Reforestation," as follows:

As a delegate to the National Tax Association convention at White Sulphur Springs, it has been my lot to have been named on both federal and state committees, with the idea of exempting from taxation those who would produce trees for the future. My experience has been that exemption from taxation for the purpose of producing our future forests is a wrong one. The sentiment of the people is against exemption from taxation, and I do not know how it may be practically applied to the growing of the forests that our country must have in the future. But the individual will not carry out the work, and the corporations will not undertake it, so it devolves upon the government of the state to reproduce those forests. The government lives for a long period in between many life-times, and ours should live as long as the earth. It is therefore up to us to reproduce those forests which we once had and, as all things come back to the state, then the state should reforest.

Next the roadways are to be considered. Roadways will grow a better class of timber and trees; they are rich in soil, generally, because they pass through the most fertile regions of the country and, up to this time, they have been waste land. I believe that the farmer is right in his wish that trees which shut in the roadsides should be cut away, that the sunlight should be let in and the roads hard-surfaced. We saw in our trip that where the trees shaded the roads they were almost impassable at times, while in the open places, they were fine.

In Michigan we took up the question of roadside planting, and Senator Penny fathered the bill, the pioneer measure, that caused our state to plant roadways. We have a very competent landscape engineer in charge of one of the departments, and he is planning to grow roadside trees, using nut-bearing trees, so that the next generation will profit largely by the work of today. And this is just because of this association.

When I was honored with your presidency, one of the features of the work we carried on was in getting nut trees from historic places, especially from Mt. Vernon. The Superintendent of Mt. Vernon very kindly told us that we could have the walnut crop from trees that were started there during Washington's time, and the only stipulation was that we should not commercialize the idea; that those nuts were priceless, and that we should not receive any money for them, but should distribute them in the schools and in a public way cause interest in the planting of nut trees. That very movement brought about wonderful results, and today there are from five to ten thousand walnut trees growing in our state, about the height of a man, all of them having come from Mt. Vernon.

On our way through from White Sulphur Springs, we passed through the home of Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, and we found some magnificent nut trees planted by Jefferson. Some of our best trees today are from those given to Washington by Thomas Jefferson; and I arranged at Mt. Vernon to secure some of the nuts from the trees Jefferson planted there.

Just yesterday Mr. Dodge, the superintendent at Mt. Vernon, again said that we could have the crop for this year. We will have a number of bushels from there, although the trees have not been as fruitful this year as usual, and I leave it to you to judge as to what we should do with those nuts this year. Some of you have ideas about this, and I would be glad to adopt them. But when the fact is known that the walnuts can be secured in that way the entire country will want them. At present I have letters from Texas and other places asking for some of Mt. Vernon's nuts. It is a movement that will cause more people, in my opinion, to have nut trees than any other, and we should push it to the limit.

I had a letter from Henry Ford's secretary, asking for a dozen trees which might be planted at Mr. Ford's place in Michigan. Mr. Ford is doing great good, so far as the saving of the forests is concerned. He has immense tracts of land where he is caring for every root and branch.

Letter from C. F. Bobler, Landscape Engineer in Michigan:

The laws of Michigan, as you are well aware, encourage the planting of trees and shrubs by the highway authorities, and protect existing roadside trees from injury or destruction. Under those laws considerable planting has already been done, and in such planting a liberal use has been made of the nut-bearing varieties of trees, especially the black walnut, which is indigenous to much of Michigan.

Besides the economic value of nut trees, on account of their food products while growing and their timber products when mature, they are generally very attractive in appearance, and, therefore, very well adapted to roadside planting.

Roadside development presents a field for considerable study to produce plantings which afford a variety of effects in trees and shrubs, by using varieties best adapted to the soil and climatic conditions, which best harmonize with the local topography and which to a considerable extent have an economic value in addition to their ornamental value. Nut trees admirably fulfill these requirements for roadside planting and while I believe that such other desirable varieties of trees as the American elm, the sugar maple, and others, should be used in proper proportions, I am fully convinced that the varieties of nut trees adapted to our soil and climate should be used liberally in the planting of the roadsides of Michigan.

The plans for the future development of the state trunk line highways in this state, contemplate the planting of the black walnut, butternut, sweet chestnut, hickory, beech, and other varieties of nut bearing trees in considerable quantities, and I am confident that their use will add to man's enjoyment of the highways and that these trees will become an economic asset to the regions where they are planted.

THE PRESIDENT: There is one thing Mr. Linton mentioned that I wish to put special emphasis upon; the distribution of trees grown from Washington's home. Last year Mr. Jones sent out a lot of seedling walnuts and there are quite a few in Rochester. It was delightful to see the interest manifested by the people receiving those seedlings and to hear how the people were succeeding. Some of them have written me.

MR. REED: Possibly it would help if, when any of us here present should chance to visit historic spots, we would get nuts from such places and send them to Mr. Linton; from Gettysburg or any of those places. We should each consider ourselves committees of one to get those nuts and to deliver them to Mr. Linton.

MR. BIXBY: I will see what I can do about it, and will get some of the nuts today.

MR. O'CONNOR: I do not know how Mr. Linton would feel about sending to different schools some of the nuts that were given him by the superintendent at Monticello, and in letting the children have a little nursery, and the means to beautify their home towns, but I will say that if you get the children started in a thing like this, you will have the parents following up.

MR. LINTON: There is another point I wish to mention. Mr. Dodge sent one bushel of the walnuts which he said were taken from a particular tree that he admired. He thought it was the best variety of all of them. That tree, a year ago, was struck by lightning; so he requests that some of the trees produced from the nuts of that particular tree, be sent back to Mt. Vernon, in order that he may have some seedlings from the original tree. It is a fact that those nuts produced the best yields of any that we planted in Michigan, showing that the seeds from the best tree will bring the best results.