DR. McKAY: We have no information on that virus.
MR. GILBERT SMITH: I have one statement to put in at this time. Dr. Crane questioned whether the Japanese walnut should be grown. I wonder if the Japanese walnut might not be a safeguard in the area where they don't have the disease, in that you will detect the disease the quickest on the Japanese walnut, and in that way anyone would become wise to it, rather than if it was in the black walnut. It might be so insidious that it could be well spread before persons knew they had it at all. I wonder if the Japanese walnut, through its quickness in showing the disease, might not be a safeguard to the other walnuts?
DR. MacDANIELS: That's a technique that's used with some other plants.
MR. CORSAN: I go on the principle that a tree that's well fed might not resist every disease, but it will resist a great many diseases and most of the diseases, if it's well fed. Now, the feeding of trees is very important. I noticed that in going back and forth between Florida and Toronto. I examine the pecan situation every fall and spring, and just to think of Stuarts—you know the size of Stuart pecan—coming in good, big crop of nuts that size (indicating with fingers). Can you see that? And you know that is less than half the size the Stuart should be. It's a great nut for cracking by machinery. In fact, a lot of people grow nothing but Stuart. And last year they had such a crop. Last year I pointed to a farm right near the highway. "Do you see that? For years I have been trying to get you to put that sawdust, which is nearly 40 feet high in a pile, around your pecans and see the vast difference in your pecans." You know there was no rain down there all last summer, and the pecans were half the proper size. Now, that sawdust would keep the moisture in. I am a great believer in the use of sawdust. It's a tree product itself and it has some of the constituents of what the pecan should feed on.
As Dr. Waite told us one time in Washington—you will probably remember the remark he made about the pecan trees in an orchard which were absolutely fruitless year after year. He went through that orchard, and he saw a pecan here and a pecan there that had a good, big crop right among the empty trees. He examined them and found signs driven into the trees, and some of the signs were put up with zinc covered nails. Those signs that had the steel covered nails had no nuts on, but those that had zinc in had a huge crop. It excited the growth of the female blossom.
Now, we have got an awful lot to discover, as you gentlemen say in this nut culture, way beyond the imagination of the human mind.
DR. MacDANIELS: We had better limit discussion to this particular problem. Is there more comment?
MR. McDANIEL: On that problem, I have observed the brooming in the heartnut seedlings about three years old, which were seedlings of the Fodermaier variety growing at Norris in the late 30's. Brooming developed in some of them in either the second or third year from seed.
DR. MacDANIELS: That answers their remark about the young trees.
MR. SLATE: A plant that is well fed and making very vigorous growth may be more attractive to the insect vector. Therefore, a healthy tree might take it.