+Editor's Note:+ The next two paragraphs should be read in connection with the "Round Table" on chestnut problems, elsewhere in this volume.
In a broad sense, it must be remembered that every variety of seedling tree, of any species and every hybrid form that has ever been planted, or grafted on another tree, has been worth something. This is still a free country and every man has the inalienable right to plant whatever he pleases. Even the hybrids of various forms, hickory, walnut, and chestnut, are all worth something. All are trees and it is better to plant a poor kind of tree than not to plant anything, particularly if it is a nut tree. Whatever prompts a man to plant a tree is worth while.
Hybrid chestnuts bred by crossing Chinese chestnuts of unknown performance record as to habit of bearing, size or flavor of nut, shape of tree, resistance to blight, or spring freezes, and other characteristics which combine to make good nuts, with the inferior and largely inedible Japanese chestnuts, are unlikely to do the damage to the industry that is sometimes predicted. They are now so mixed up that few will be planted by themselves, and there is considerable evidence that the xenia influence of good Chinese chestnuts with which the trees are being planted will render nuts from these hybrid trees fit to market and eat.
[Illustration: MILDRED AND WESLEY LANGDOC]
President Davidson: The value of nut trees in Tennessee, then, will be discussed by Mr. F. S. Chance of the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station in Knoxville.
The Value of Nut Trees in Tennessee
F. S. CHANCE, Vice-Director, Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station,
Knoxville, Tennessee.
Mr. Chance: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: As a representative of the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Tennessee I want to say it is a great honor to have this distinguished group meet here in Tennessee, especially on the banks of beautiful Norris Lake, which is one of the tributaries to the dammedest river in the country. We are something like 600 miles from the Gilbertsville Dam, or Kentucky Dam near Paducah, Kentucky, and this area here is the beginning of a chain of lakes that run just about that far.
For those of you who are from a distance, you may know that in making a chain of lakes out of this great Tennessee Valley that we covered up lots of good land. We have developed lots of good power. Now, I am not just sure why I was put on this program, because, really I am not a nut tree specialist, as I see most of you people are. I will admit that I have been associating with experimentation for the last eight or ten years and have become slightly nutty, but really my big interest is timber. I am still a blockhead. So in discussing and talking with you this morning for a few minutes about the value of nut trees in Tennessee I want you to just keep in the back of your minds that the thing in the timber world that I think is the prettiest when it comes to furniture is black walnut.
So in some plantings that we made several years ago with the help of Spencer Chase at our various substations and at the parent station at Knoxville, when we began to prune those trees I wanted to go to pruning for timber and he wanted to go to pruning for nuts. He won. So as we developed these plantings we are sure that we are going to have some very excellent nut trees.