DR. GRAVES: Yes, with any ordinary paint. There is a tree wood paint, I know, that's better, but we use ordinary paint.
Meeting adjourned at 4:50 o'clock, p.m.
MONDAY EVENING SESSION
"What's Your Problem?"—Round Table Discussion
Moderator: J. W. McKay
Panel: J. C. McDaniel, D. C. Snyder, Jesse D. Diller, Stephen Bernath
DR. MCKAY: In these panel discussions the moderator usually lays a little background as an introduction to the subject of the evening. This title came from a conversation with Dr. Crane. We were talking about people asking questions about their problems, and decided to have a panel discussion. Right there we chose the title, "What's your problem?"
All of us have problems to deal with in every walk of life. We run up against difficulties, and usually much of our time is taken up in solving or coping with them. At Beltsville we answer a great many letters, and a great many people ask us about their problems. In answering problems, we push the industry forward, because we remove something that is holding it back.
Sometimes the answer to a problem is found by trying to analyze our successes. In growing nut trees we may have an unusually good crop on a particular variety or tree. The question is, why does that tree bear well that particular year, and very frequently it is difficult to understand why. It is very difficult, for example, in the case of one success, to repeat that success, because the second time you try to do it, something else comes in, and you probably have a failure and, well, you don't know why. It is frequently very difficult to analyze our successes. Another way of stating it is, of course, that our successes are often Nature's gift, and we do not know the factors and the forces that go into that gift.
I want to digress here just a little bit by quoting one thing that Mr. Best said. I wish, by the way, that we could incorporate some of his homey philosophy into some of our minutes so as to really benefit by some of his remarks. I was impressed this morning by his statement in dealing with a "fairyland of nuts," you remember that language he used, "no diseases, no insects, no failures."