Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting / Washington, D. C. September 8 and 9, 1916.

by Unknown

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH, AT 10.30 A. M.

Meeting called to order by the President.

THE PRESIDENT: The first order of business, I believe, will be the report of the Nominating Committee.

THE SECRETARY: The report of the Nominating Committee is the following:
For President, W. C. Reed, Vincennes, Indiana; Vice-President, W. N.
Hutt, Raleigh, North Carolina; Secretary-Treasurer, Dr. W. C. Deming,
Georgetown, Connecticut.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, I move that the report of this Nominating
Committee be accepted and adopted, and these officers declared elected.

THE PRESIDENT: Do I hear a second?

A MEMBER: Second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: The nomination of this list is moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? If not, all those in favor will say "aye;" opposed, like sign, it is carried, and they are elected.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: While I am on the floor, I want to read a resolution which I have drafted, and I will read the clauses separately:

"Owing to the fatal character, the unchecked and rapid spread of the chestnut blight," is there any question about that? If that is not true, let somebody hold up his hand.

"Owing to the fact that it has been widely disseminated through the shipment of nursery stock;" is that correct?

"Owing to the fact that in the first stages the disease cannot be easily detected;" is that true?

"Owing to the fact that the young trees apparently have a temporary immunity from the disease;"

"Therefore, the Northern Nut Growers' Association believes that the continued free shipment of chestnut nursery stock will be productive of endless destruction of property in those places where the chestnut trees haven't yet the disease." If that is unsound, why, somebody say so.

"Therefore, be it resolved, that we, the Northern Nut Growers' Association, suggest that the Secretary of Agriculture prohibit the shipment of chestnut nursery stock, except in the localities known to have the blight, and that with each permit for shipment shall go a bulletin or circular giving the important facts about the chestnut blight. The only exception to this regulation shall be the shipments for experimental purposes, and such shipments must have the above mentioned permit, and the name of the nursery from which such trees have come, and must be inspected by Federal inspectors." I assume, of course, that inspection is a general inspection. I don't mean each particular shipment. If there are any questions about that, why, I will let the chair answer them.

DR. ULMAN: Mr. Littlepage, I would like to ask a question, or, rather, offer a criticism. If I understand you rightly, you say, "except in the districts where blight is prevalent." As a matter of fact, sir, the particular nursery that advertises the chestnut tree works within a radius of possibly 250 miles of Rochester, in a district where there are many prospective horticulturists. One of the things that impressed me more than anything else in the report of the Secretary was the fact that we have lost a large number of members, and that we haven't attracted to ourselves many new members. So far as my personal experience goes, if I were to choose the one method of being most thoroughly disliked, it would be to ask my neighbors, particularly those who do not know me, to become members of any kind of a nut association. There is a glamour about planting, and it is a sort of a disease with some people, year after year, to seek for novelties. These nut tree advertisements that read so well attract many purchasers. Right here in this section people are buying nut trees that they are going to plant in a blighted district, and these people, when they see what utter failures they have, will be so disgusted with nut growing that when you approach them you cannot talk nuts to them, and you will never have them join the Association. More and more are leaving the Association, and very few new ones are coming in to take their places. So I think the resolution ought to be changed.

THE PRESIDENT: In what respect would you have it changed?

DR. ULMAN: To apply generally.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes. Well, I agree very largely with what the doctor says. I have always felt that the success of this organization—the success of the nut industry as a whole—depended upon its being upon an entirely truthful, fair and honest basis. I would rather see a crooked cashier in a bank than a crooked nurseryman or tree man. The cashier you can check up at 4:30 every afternoon; you can't check up the crooked tree man for about ten years. I think the worst of all discouraging things to people who want to go to the country to build up farms and homes is to run into alluring, but misleading, advertisements. I have an abounding faith in tree culture. I think that the pecan tree, the black walnut, varieties of the English walnut and of a number of other nut trees, are going to make it most possible and more desirable for men to go to the country, but I think the success of those things depends upon giving those people, as far as possible, facts, and not misleading them. Wherever a man sets a tree that is a failure you have a man as a failure generally as a tree man, and wherever you get a man to set a tree that succeeds, you have a living, walking advocate of the tree business. This Association has been fortunate all along in its policies. It has always stood against the fraudulent promotions; it has always stood against fraudulent nursery stock; it has always stood against fraudulent representations, and I think, for that reason, that its future is reasonably safe, assuming that is its continued policy.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you accept Dr. Ulman's amendment?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I accept it.

MR. JONES: As I understand the resolution, it applies to nurseries in the infected areas.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes.

MR. JONES: I believe it is practically impossible to grow trees in an infected area without sending out the blight, but if a man is isolated, like Mr. Riehl, at Alton, Illinois, he can grow trees without danger of sending out the blight.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the resolution permits him to do that.

MR. M. P. REED: Did I understand Mr. Kellerman to say the Department hasn't authority to quarantine against such things?

THE PRESIDENT: No. The point brought up was the theory that lay back of the quarantine. The speaker made the point that shipment of infected trees was killing the tree aspirations of the people who ought to be developing the nut industry. Every time a man buys a chestnut tree and it dies with blight that man is chilled out of business. Now this resolution doesn't cover that man. It is based on the ground of injury to the industry. You can't very well define the limits of where the blight is not, but it can be fairly well defined as to where it is, and that is up to the Department.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: The resolutions are offered in a suggestive way, Mr. President. If the Secretary wants to turn the suggestion down, we will meet again next year any way.

PROF. CLOSE: I would like some information as to how you propose to take this matter up with the Department. I was present a year or so ago at a hearing before the Federal Horticultural Board—I don't know whether any one else present was there at the time—but the whole thing hinged largely on Colonel Sober's attitude in propagating and sending out the Paragon chestnut, and I think the Department—the Federal Horticultural Board—originated the question that you are discussing now, and Colonel Sober came there with a whole lot of pretty good information, and people to back up what he said, and the Department put up a mighty poor show, I tell you. I was ashamed of what the Department men had to say, and Colonel Sober won out hands down. Now, if this question comes up again, it will be referred, no doubt, to the Federal Horticultural Board, and you will need a good, strong representation, with plenty of facts back of you, and if you can put up a strong enough case there is no doubt but what you can establish this quarantine. But I would hate to see the question taken up again and floored as easily as it was at that time.

THE PRESIDENT: Prof. Close, I have read part of the testimony.—I was not present at the meeting—and when one considers the number of things that were said at that meeting that are not so, and the amount of other evidence that has come up since, I think the defenders of the public will have the material to make a much stronger presentation than they did then, and, what is more, I think some of them will be there. Of course, when a man has a possibility of getting a quarter of a million dollars out of a lot of junk, he can spend money to hire people to say things, and when "the dear public" is paying nobody to go, as was the case last time, nobody goes. If that hearing comes again, I think some from this Association will be present.

PROF. CLOSE: That is just the point I want to bring up. You have got to be there with the information.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I just want to say a word, rather endorsing what Professor Close has had to say. The Department of Agriculture, the quarantine board, or anybody else, can't go out of their limitations and get testimony. If we think there ought to be a quarantine, then, whenever there is a public invitation sent out, such as was sent out before, we ought to have the nerve to go down there before the Department officials and tell them the truth. It is very easy for us to stand up here and write papers and articles criticising the quarantine board and the Department of Agriculture. If we have anything to say about these things we ought to go down there and say it. If other people come there and present facts as a matter of record, the Board can't entirely go outside of those facts and decide a case right out of the clear sky. If this organization wants to be effective, it ought to appoint a committee to present those things before that Board.

Resolution adopted.

THE SECRETARY: I have had in mind some time the idea involved in this resolution, which I have hastily drawn up.

"Since the principles underlying the successful and economical propagation of nut trees are not yet thoroughly understood or generally known, and much effort is being wasted and much disappointment incurred in unsuccessful or partially successful efforts in propagation.

"Resolved, that it is the sense of this meeting that systematic and controlled experiments be made, under the direction of the Department of Agriculture, for the purpose of determining the principles underlying the successful propagation of nut trees in all sections of the country."

DR. ULMAN: Second that motion. (Carried.)

MR. C. A. REED: I would like to present an invitation to meet at Battle
Creek.

MR. ROPER: Petersburg invites us to meet at Petersburg.

THE PRESIDENT: Those matters are settled by the Executive Committee.

MR. T. P. LITTLEPAGE: Would it not be well, Mr. President, to determine upon a meeting place now, and let it be known, so that everybody can prepare for it? Being a member of the Executive Committee, I would prefer myself that the Association take the responsibility for deciding the meeting place. If these meeting places are selected in advance, it makes it possible for a good many people to plan their vacation trips to fit in. In order to get the matter before the Association, I move that the Society determine right now the next meeting place. (Seconded.)

MR. OLCOTT: I think Mr. Littlepage's motion is of more than ordinary importance. The Association, heretofore, has left that matter, very properly, perhaps, to the Executive Committee. The result is that little or no attention is given to the place of meeting until thirty or ninety days before the date of that meeting. It would be very much better if we knew several months ahead about the meeting, and I think we would have a larger attendance and more enthusiasm. The American Association of Nurserymen names the date at the time of their meeting for the following meeting, and most other organizations do the same, and the results are quite perceptible.

(Motion carried.)

THE SECRETARY: We have an invitation from the Evansville Chamber of Commerce, one from the San Francisco Convention League, to meet at San Francisco, one from Sears, Roebuck & Company, to meet in Chicago, and enjoy a luncheon at their expense and a trip through their plant; one from Dr. Morris to meet at his place, or to meet at Stamford and spend as much time as possible on his place. We could meet in New York City and visit Dr. Morris' place very comfortably. We have an invitation from Petersburg, Va.; one to meet with Dr. Kellogg, at Battle Creek, Mich., and one from Mr. Rush to meet at Lancaster, Pa. We have had under consideration a proposition to meet somewhere in the South, possibly with the Southern Nut Growers. Those are all the invitations that I know of.

MR. C. A. REED: May I make a remark right here? It seems to me that before we decide on the place of meeting we ought to take into consideration what we are going to any of these places to accomplish, and the time of year that we want to go there. Now, if we go to Lancaster, or to almost any of these other places, we ought to have a summer meeting when we can go out and see the trees, but if we go up to Battle Creek we could just as well go there in the winter time. The purpose of going there, as I understand it, would be to lay emphasis on the subject of nuts for food. Whether we want to take our time now for a meeting, to emphasize that, or whether we want to see nut trees growing and discuss cultural problems, is a question to be decided.

THE PRESIDENT: In the absence of a definite method of procedure on this question, which we never before handled in this way, the chair is entirely willing to receive instructions, but I suggest that we have a rising vote for one place after another, and that the place receiving the greatest number of votes gets the convention.

MR. M. P. REED: We have seen trees in nurseries for several years, and I think that now we ought to select some place where we can get other and broader ideas on nuts. I think Battle Creek would be the best place.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other favorite son or neighbor wish to make a speech in favor of his own or nearby city?

MR. HENRY STABLER: It appeals to me very strongly to see Dr. Morris' experimental grounds at Stamford, Connecticut. As I understand it, he has the greatest collection of nut-bearing trees in the United States, and looking over this would help us in a fine way.

MR. JAMES H. KYNER: Mr. President, I am not a member of this
Association, but for a number of years I have been trying to grow nuts.
I am very much interested in the subject, and I would like to know if I
have any rights on this floor.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: It costs you two dollars to vote.

MR. KYNER: All right, I will just give two dollars.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I move that the gentleman be accepted as a full member now and have full authority to make speeches. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: The gentleman will proceed to the making of his speech.

MR. KYNER: I have no speech. I simply want to vote "aye" for Stamford and New York.

(Vote taken.)

THE SECRETARY: The result is as follows: For Evansville, 2; Stamford, 10; Battle Creek, 3; Petersburg, 3; Lancaster, 1; for Chicago, San Francisco and the National Nut Growers, 0.

THE PRESIDENT: We are now ready, I believe, to proceed with the technical part of the programme. The chair would like to call for information as to the relative behavior of the Northern pecans, top-worked or transplanted. Is there, for example, any evidence anywhere as to the fruiting of any Northern pecan except on the parent tree?

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Wilkinson, in Indiana, has some top-worked bearing trees.

THE PRESIDENT: Unfortunately, they are right at home. What varieties has he?

MR. MCCOY: The Major.

THE PRESIDENT: And how old was it before he top-worked it?

MR. MCCOY: Three years, I think.

THE PRESIDENT: On pecan?

A MEMBER: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: The Major bore the fourth year, three years old. I believe that is the first record we have of that sort. Has any other borne?

MR. MCCOY: A good many of my young trees bloom in the nursery, but I don't think they succeeded in setting any nuts.

MR. M. P. REED: We have had some two-year trees in nursery, grafted. Most all of them bloomed when two years old—the staminate but not the pestillate blossoms.

THE PRESIDENT: I had a staminate blossom the third season on Butterick in northern Virginia.

MR. HENRY STABLER: Is there any difference between trees budded from young trees in the nursery row which are not in bearing, which have a growth very much resembling water-sprouts, and those budded from bearing trees?

PROF. HUTT: Mr. President, I can't give any experimental data on that line, but the common practice of nurserymen in taking their bud-wood from the nursery stock has been in use for years and years, as with peaches. Very seldom do the nurserymen go to the original trees and get their buds, but it is cut from nursery stock, because it is in a fine condition to work. I think that trees propagated from young, vigorous wood, cut in the nursery, are all right. I am not so sure as to how long it is before they come into bearing.

MR. HENRY STABLER: I don't mean to say it is an undesirable practice to bud from the nursery row, but is there any difference in the time of coming into bearing?

THE PRESIDENT: I spent a very considerable amount of time and money in that belief, but at State College, they made an elaborate test, and they have found no difference between the tree from a water-sprout and one from the bearing tree.

MR. JONES: It is not practicable to propagate very largely from young trees, either fruit trees or nut trees, but there is a good deal in maturity of the wood. The plan we follow is to have mature plots and graft from these old trees. That gives the best wood for nursery propagation.

THE PRESIDENT: Keeping the same tree?

MR. JONES: Yes, right along. That costs a little more money than to propagate from the nursery, but we think it is better. We get better results.

THE PRESIDENT: How have the different varieties of the northern pecan shown up with regard to speed of growth? At the present time we are practically ignorant as to which of seven or eight named and propagated varieties to count on. Apparently, the Busseron has the record for early bearing, with the Major as second. What about the record of the trees for making wood, not in the nursery row, but after it has been transplanted and put in the field? Is there any distinct leadership of one Northern pecan over another in making wood?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: If the members who go out to my place this afternoon will observe closely they will have a chance to see something of the tree growth for the first three years. They will have a chance to observe the Indiana, the Busseron, the Kentucky, the Green River, the Major and the Posey, with three year's growth. They will see a row of Green Rivers, some trees nine feet high, and others that haven't grown two feet. That is the individual tree variation, however. They will see certain characteristics running clear through.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mr. Littlepage, it is a job to go and get exact results from another man's experimental ground. Which is the winner for speed, Mr. McCoy?

MR. MCCOY: Well, I know more about how they grow in the nursery than I do when transplanted. I haven't transplanted as many trees as Mr. Littlepage, but, of course, the tree will act very similarly in the nursery to what it does after you transplant it. We have learned at a glance to tell the difference in the varieties. We don't have to go to the books or to the stakes to tell each particular variety, as each variety has its distinguishing characteristics. For instance, the Kentucky and the Butterick and the Busseron are all inclined to grow up. I don't know why that should be true, but they all have the lumber characteristics. The Kentucky grows in the river bottoms surrounded by lumber trees. Now, the Posey doesn't grow very tall, but it grows a wonderful stocky, sturdy tree, and has leaf stems as long as my arm in the nursery. Of course, each particular wood has its color characteristics. But one thing I observed was that in the other nurseries they don't color up as they do in mine. For instance, at Mr. Jones', it will puzzle me sometimes to tell which variety it is by looking at the wood. Of course, after he would say "This is Butterick" or "Busseron," I could see, probably, the characteristics, but there is a little difference in the color of the wood.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you found any difference between these three trees as to attainment of height?

MR. MCCOY: Well, I suspect that the Butterick is the fastest grower of them.

THE PRESIDENT: What is the slowest?

MR. MCCOY: The Indiana, I guess.

A MEMBER: How does the Major behave?

MR. MCCOY: The Major is a very slender, tall tree. The Green River is inclined to be spreading.

THE PRESIDENT: That testimony as to the Indiana being a slow grower—does anybody verify it?

MR: LITTLEPAGE: Same thing in Maryland, Mr. President—slowest grower I have.

THE PRESIDENT: Is that sufficiently marked to make it best for us to hold up its propagation until it has shown some reason for being grown?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I don't know. The Busseron and the Indiana, which is supposed to be a seedling of the Busseron—the Busseron outgrows the Indiana in Maryland five times. But the Indiana is a thin-husked nut. The Busseron, on the other hand, is a thick-husked nut, a fine place for the nut worm if he ever gets bad. There are a lot of such things that you have to think of.

MR. MCCOY: I visited most of these parent trees this year. They are all centered around Evansville. There is no crop on the Busseron. The Indiana will, perhaps, have a peck. In the month of May, in Kentucky, and Indiana, and Illinois, we had rains continually. I have often heard the expression from the Southern nurserymen that "the pecan is caught with the frost." Now, that is clear out of place with us. We all smile at the idea that an Illinois, Indiana or Kentucky pecan would be caught with the frost, which never affects them. But the rains always affect them. If the month of May is a beautiful, dry, clear month, you can gamble on the pecan crop. Now, this year we won't have much of a crop. The Warwick will have a gallon or two, and the Kentucky crop is a failure. The Green River and Major we didn't get to, but I suspect that very few of our own trees will have a crop this year.

MR. M. P. REED: Mr. McCoy, I was up there last week, and the Busseron has probably four times as many nuts as the Indiana. It has a light crop, while the Indiana has a very light crop. (Laughter.)

MR. MCCOY: When were you there, Mr. Reed?

MR. M. P. REED: Last Sunday.

MR. JONES: You can't judge a pecan by the growth of the tree. You take a pecan that makes a thick head and lots of limbs, and it is very likely to be a heavy bearer. On the other hand, a nurseryman likes a variety that makes a tree, you know.

THE PRESIDENT: On your criterion of a bunched top, which of these eight varieties we are now propagating is the most promising?

MR. JONES: The Butterick appeals to me.

THE PRESIDENT: Is the Posey in the same class?

MR. JONES: The Indiana makes a thick head.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other do that?

MR. JONES: The Green River is inclined to on the mature block, but not the first year in the nursery.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, in view of the fact that this meeting is reported, and that what we say will go into the official records to be read by lots of people who can't come and examine us, it might be understood that there would be some question about the bearing of these Northern pecan trees. As a matter of fact, I am surprised that any of them bore any nuts this year when I think how hard Mr. McCoy and Mr. Reed and myself have cut them for bud-wood. As a matter of fact, our opinion is that these Northern pecan trees are all excellent bearers, as the bearing reputation goes with pecan trees. I have watched them pretty carefully, and the best evidence of what I think of them is that I am setting them in my orchard. For fear that the minutes may leave the impression with some casual reader later that these trees bear a quart, and two gallons, I just want to say that if these gentlemen put into the record the amount of nuts that they know the Green River, the Butterick, the Posey and Major have borne—for instance, six weeks ago I bought sixty pounds of Posey nuts from a certain tree. The man who counted them counted 120 pounds on the tree, and if the boys around were as active as when I was a boy, I bet he didn't get more than half of them.

THE PRESIDENT: This is the time of year when the squirrels get nuts, and
I expect they got after the trees, too.

MISS LOUISE LITTLEPAGE: Why does the rain affect the nuts, and why in that certain one month?

MR. MCCOY: In our latitude the pecan blooms somewhere near the twentieth of May, from that probably up to the twenty-fifth, and the pollen is scattered by the winds, and, if it rains at that particular time, the female bloom perishes, and we have no pecans. I think the pecan depends entirely upon the winds.

THE PRESIDENT: We have been hoping all the time that we would have a chance to hear from Prof. Hutt on the relation of the hickory stock to the pecan top. A good many persons have experimented with it, and papers are giving, from time to time, glowing accounts of the pecan tree on hickory roots. We would like to hear from Prof. Hutt.

PROF. HUTT: We haven't much data matured on that at present, Mr. President. It takes so long to get data on those subjects. We have a lot of trees budded on the stocks of water hickory and on the pecan, and we are testing them out. My theory was that the Hicoria aquatica, growing in wet, sour lands, would enlarge the range of probable production of pecans on such lands, and on lands on which the pecan, on its own roots, could not normally be grown, but our data are not matured yet. I think they have been three years in the nursery and two years set in the orchard. It will probably be four or five years before we get any exact data on that subject.

THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps, Mr. C. A. Reed has investigated some of the later top-worked hickories.

MR. C. A. REED: That is an old question—pecan on hickory. It has been tried all over the South and the Southwest, and you will see some this afternoon at Mr. Littlepage's place. As a usual thing, the enthusiasm over pecan on hickory has run high while the experiment was new. The propagator has found that it was not a difficult thing to make the scions live, and, so long as the hickory stock is larger than the pecan scion, so that the feeding capacity is equal to, or even greater than, the consuming capacity of the scion, the outlook has been very satisfactory and encouraging, and while that stage has been going on a great deal has been written. A little later you hear less about it, and less and less, until, finally, you hear almost nothing. But I will say this, that there are sections in the Southwest where there is considerable enthusiasm over it just now. Just recently an article was published by Judge Frank Gwynn which was quite encouraging, and from his point of view it is. He is on high, hilly land, where he has no pecan trees, and he has been able to get nuts considerably sooner by top-working these dryland hickories—the mocker nut, or "bull nut," as it is known down there—and so far he is getting very satisfactory crops. But it is the consensus of opinion over the entire South, so far as I have observed it, that where there are pecan trees suitable for top-working, they answer much better, and the final outcome is very much more satisfactory with pecan on pecan than with pecan on hickory. Now, with pecan on Hicoria aquatica, which Prof. Hutt spoke of, I can cite you one instance which is very interesting south of Morgan City, Louisiana. Mr. Frank Beadle, I believe, was the name, top-worked a number of trees that were standing in water, and he also top-worked some that he had transplanted from the wet bottom to higher land. Those that were transplanted lived and bore nuts for quite a number of years. The last I knew they were bearing quite satisfactory crops, but those that were allowed to remain in the standing water died very shortly after the pecan top began to develop. The entire tree died.

THE PRESIDENT: That is, the pecan top killed the native right in its own habitat.

MR. C A. REED: That's right.

DR. STABLER: How about the acidity of the soil on that higher land? Was that tested?

MR. C. A. REED: Well, there would be so very little difference in the level of the soil that I imagine the acidity would be about the same. When I said "high land" I meant land that wasn't over-flowed.

DR. STABLER: Oh, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Reed, you made the qualified statement awhile ago that where a man had a choice between hickory and pecan stock for top-working, he should take the pecan. Now, in the North there are magnificent stands of native hickory—the Appalachians are full of it from end to end. Would you advise him not to bother with that?

MR. C. A. REED: There is another question that enters there. I don't believe that you can grow good pecans on hickory stocks on uplands where there is not moisture enough in the soil to grow good pecans on pecan stocks. It takes moisture to make pecans, and if there isn't enough in the upland soil to grow pecan trees on pecan roots I don't believe there is any evidence to indicate that you can get them on hickory roots.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the hickory only grows about six or eight weeks every summer, and the pecan grows all summer. I think that answers the question.

PROF. HUTT: A case came up last year in the National Nut Growers' Association that was quite interesting. Mr. Smithwick, of Americus, Georgia, brought to the meeting and exhibited a number of varieties of pecan grown on hickory—fourteen varieties, standard varieties, grafted on a hickory tree, and they were remarkable for their small size. They were remarkably small—smaller than ordinary, woods-grown seedling pecans. There were Schleys and Delmas, and various other varieties that you could recognize by the form of the nuts, but exceedingly small. I believe Mr. Reed's point is the crux of the whole situation, that if you have a good supply of moisture they will make nuts of a pretty fair size, but unless the moisture supply is very large you get diminutive nuts. These were matured in the South. The hickory is such a slow grower in comparison with the pecan—that is, the common varieties—that it can't keep up with the pecan top.

MR. C. A. REED: Some of the nuts from that tree were on exhibition where you were this morning.

THE PRESIDENT: Then you have, practically, a dwarfing, with the dwarfing manifesting itself in the fruit rather than in the wood.

MR. C. A. REED: It did in that one instance, but, on the other hand, we have seen pecans grown on top-worked hickories that you could hardly tell from typical specimens of pecans grown on pecan stocks.

THE PRESIDENT: Isn't the bitternut several times as rapid in growth as the shagbark, or some others? That is, probably, one of the best stocks for the hickories if one wishes to experiment.

MR. C. A. REED: AS Colonel Van Duzee said last night, "there are a lot of things we don't know." This is one of them. I might quote a number of men who are right here in this audience to convince you that we don't any of us know much about nut culture today. I will quote Dr. Morris and Mr. Littlepage. We were talking about hickory nut varieties in Dr. Morris' office one night about the first of this year, when Mr. Littlepage made the remark that "the man who didn't change his mind every three years on nut culture didn't keep up with the game," and Dr. Morris replied that he had changed his mind so much in the last five years he had no respect for any man who believed what he said. Now, when you can't believe Dr. Morris, Colonel Van Duzee, or Dr. Smith, what are you going to do with the rest of us?

COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Reed, I didn't say what you said I did. I said:
"There are so many things you already know that are not true."
(Laughter.)

MR. C. A. REED: Well, now, I will quote another man, Dr. Curtis, one of the best known pecan men in the South. It was Dr. Curtis that I went to for my initial experience in pecans. The first I ever saw were in his orchard in Florida, and I asked him quite a good many questions, and he would tell me a story and go away. And I called him up one day, went into his orchard in harvest time when he was gathering the nuts in the hulls and taking them to the packing house. And I said "What is that for?" And he said "Don't you see those shuck worms all through the hulls here? I am throwing them out there to let the chickens get them." "Well," said I, "can you say you are getting rid of the shuck worms by doing that?" And he replied, "I can see, one year with another, that they are gradually getting less." A year later I went down there before he did. He was in Maine at the time, but his orchard trees were just alive with shuck worms, every variety almost eaten up with them. I said to him, when he came back, "I thought you were going to get rid of those shuck worms by feeding them to the chickens?" "Well, there it goes," he said, "you get a nice theory all worked out and some one comes along and asks you a simple little question that knocks it all in the head." And that is almost the unanimous experience. What you know you have got to qualify if you talk at all. I am getting to be such a pessimist I am not much good in the government any more. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: The one hope a college professor of my acquaintance has is when a student comes around and says he believes he doesn't know much. He regards that as the beginning of knowledge, and I think that Mr. Reed's confessions, and incriminations of the rest of us, show one thing, perhaps, better than anything else, and that is the great necessity of organizations of this sort in which many men who are trying many things in many ways come together and give the results of their observations. No doubt, this whole question of agriculture in general, and nuts in particular, is so complex, it is so run through and through with so many different controlling factors, and, with them, so many new things are constantly coming along, that we are all going to be handing down to our children and grandchildren a great and, perhaps, increasing host of problems to be investigated, and new realms in which knowledge can be piled up for the benefit of those who wish to use it.

COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. President, may I talk half a minute? I can't help but feel that, perhaps, there may be some good brother or sister who may have been over-impressed with the difficulties, who might have been discouraged, who might have left this meeting, perhaps, and failed to see what this meeting is for—to stimulate the planting of nut trees. Notwithstanding the emphasis that has been put on all these things, notwithstanding the difficulties and disappointments that we are all laboring under at the present time, I feel that we have a wonderful industry ahead of us. I can't see any reason in the world why we should not go on within our means, wisely planting nut trees. It doesn't make any difference if you are seventy-five or eighty years old, plant nut trees, because they will be a constant pleasure to you, and, ultimately, a benefit to some one else.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President—

THE PRESIDENT: This is Mr. Littlepage, ladies and gentlemen. (Laughter.)

MR. LITTLEPAGE: That is a very important suggestion that you just made. If you were to ask the average groceryman in Washington City whether he wanted his son to go into the grocery business he would say no. If you asked a lawyer if you should make a lawyer out of your son, if the lawyer looks back over the drudgery and years of toil that it takes to make a lawyer, he would undoubtedly hesitate to recommend it, and if you asked a doctor or a college professor a similar question, they, no doubt, would steer you clear away from a university. And so, Mr. President, if you stand back on the difficulties in these things, there would be not only no grocerymen, but no lawyers, no doctors, no dentists, and, perhaps, nobody working for the government. (Laughter and applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: I want to take the liberty of using thirty seconds in this period of exhortation and confession to come in on the same strain. After all, what is life for? How many of us want the thing that is dead easy, and how many of us want the job with nothing to do? We all, in a certain lazy mood, say we want something easy and want to rest, but if there is anything on earth that a man shuns above all else it is that little room with absolutely nothing to do, namely, a cell. When they want to break a man they don't put him at hard labor on the stone pile; they put him in a little room with nothing to do. The youngster who plays doesn't want a dead easy game. He builds a house, and, when he has done with it, bang, he doesn't want the house he wanted to build. And I must confess that if it were perfectly plain sailing and you could plant out all these nut trees and have them grow like fury, it would not be much fun. It is a fact that men like to achieve and experiment; men like effort. Suppose everybody in this country retired and could put up his feet and do nothing, there wouldn't be a name in the paper the next morning. Mr. Hughes, President Wilson, Mr. Taft, Mr. Brandies, and all of the great men who are doing things in this world would all be gone fanning themselves quietly. This world is run by men who don't have to work; they work for fun. So I wish to submit that the tree—if a man happens to be built to love plants that grow—that the tree is one of the great avenues of fun.

MR. WEBER: Mr. President, along the same line of thought, I wish to express my views with what Colonel Van Duzee has had to say. If we were to attend a convention of surgeons and hear different diseases and ailments of the body discussed, we would probably all be disposed to think that we were standing on the tip-end of the diving board into eternity beyond. But people keep on living just the same, notwithstanding the knocking of the doctors, and the diseases to which we are subject, and trees will keep on growing just the same, notwithstanding their diseases and various other troubles, and so I think no one should be discouraged.

THE SECRETARY: I just want to add my little encouragement. In spite of all the failure that I have had, and they have been many, in spite of the reports of failures of others and the pessimism of others, I have the same abiding faith in the future of nut growing, and just the same enthusiasm for it that I had in the beginning, if not greater. (Applause.)

MR. KYNER: Mr. President, I came here to get information on a matter that I am very much interested in. At seventy years of age I have become interested in nut growing—in nut culture. (Applause.) I am not planting particularly for myself, not that I expect to get any harvest from these trees, but I do want to see them bear fruit—bear nuts. I want to plant the right kind of trees. I have joined this Association; I intend to retain a membership in it as long as the Association lives. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: My dear sir, that will cost you twenty dollars for a life membership. (Laughter.)

MR. KYNER: And I want to get all the information that the Association has. Now, if I can get it in fifteen or twenty minutes, why, let me have it. (Laughter.) I bought Persian walnuts at a nursery, cultivated them, and watched them, walked around them and looked at them, and along came a winter and killed them. I bought them from a Rochester nursery. Now, they didn't grow them there. They must have grown them somewhere else. If they had been grown in a Rochester nursery they would have withstood the severity of a Maryland winter. Now, there is something wrong there. This Association should take this matter up with that nursery. They should not be allowed to take people's money and give them chaff for it. I am saying this for the benefit of some of our members here who are growing nut trees for sale.

THE PRESIDENT: May I give you a bit of information here? We have a list of accredited nurserymen. This Association has a list of nurserymen in whose trees we think we can place more confidence than in some others.

MR. KYNER: I would like to get that. But now I have set out a whole lot of these Persian walnuts, and pecans, filberts, Japanese walnuts, etc., and I guess every one of them is a seedling, and I don't know what I have, and I don't know how many varieties of Japanese walnuts there are. I supposed a Japanese walnut was a Japanese walnut, and that that was all there was to it. But I get some trees from one nursery, and some from another, and they grow up and aren't alike at all. Now, I haven't so very awfully long to be in the business of setting out nut growing trees, and I want to get the right kind, and I want this Association's assistance in that matter, and while you are assisting me you are assisting people all over the country. Men and women everywhere are interested in nut growing. They want nut trees, but how are they going to know that they are getting what they want? I believe it is up to this Association to help them get the right kind of stuff. I came in here purposely to get your help.

THE PRESIDENT: You go on the excursion this afternoon and you will find plenty of men there that will take pleasure in explaining some of these things to you. Our plan is to go at one o'clock from the corner of Fourteenth and H streets to the grounds of Mr. Littlepage, who has practically all the good varieties of northern pecans growing there, and on the trip will be men who can answer most every question you want to know. I think that brings us to the point of adjournment.

COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. President, I move we adjourn.

A MEMBER: Second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: The meeting stands adjourned.