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?