A Member: I saw quite recently that there were two cases of fatal poisoning in Connecticut from the result of using nuts said to have been blighted. I would like to know if that has been verified.
Mr. Collins: There have been, so far as I know, about fifteen cases of supposed chestnut poisoning in the vicinity of Hartford with five deaths. We have reports of disease and possible death in other portions of the country, particularly in the northeast. These reports come in such a way that it is impossible to say definitely that chestnuts caused the trouble, but this much can be said: our office here in Washington has a physician working upon this very point. At the present time all that I can say is that there is no doubt about the cases of illness and it is impossible to dissociate the eating of chestnuts from the possibilities. At the same time it is not possible to show that chestnuts were the cause of the trouble rather than something else which was taken at the same time.
The Secretary: I wrote to the physician near Hartford whose wife is reported to have died, but I have had no answer.
Dr. Metcalf: After following those cases up and finding that chestnuts could not be excluded as a possible cause, we have started experiments with various animals, also some chemical, to determine if there is any possibility of any definite toxic substance in the nuts; so far results are negligible. We are not prepared to say whether there is anything in chestnut poisoning or whether there is not.
The Secretary: I think there are three points in relation to the chestnut blight of very great importance to the practical nut grower, and I would like Professor Collins to answer these questions. In the first place, how far are we justified in recommending planting of non-immune varieties within the blighted area, in limited quantities, with the understanding that there is a fair show of keeping them tolerably free from the blight by watchful care and cutting out? Mr. Roberts of New Jersey has a large chestnut orchard and he says he is not afraid of the blight. He has had a large crop of chestnuts this year, and he says that, while he has cut out, I believe, one orchard of small trees his large bearing trees are not seriously affected by the blight. This is the same testimony that we had from Colonel Sober last year.
The second question is, how far are we justified in recommending the planting of chestnuts outside of the present blighted area? It seems to me this is a very important point. Can we go so far outside the present blight area, perhaps beyond the present range of the chestnut tree, that we can hope to plant them without their being exposed to danger, or much danger, of contagion from the blight? Can we recommend their being planted in places where the chestnut does not grow now perhaps within several hundred miles?
And the third question is in regard to immune varieties. How far has the immune quality of any varieties been demonstrated?
Professor Collins: With regard to the first question,—planting of non-immune varieties within the chestnut disease area,—I don't feel like recommending it except on an experimental basis. Perhaps I am recommending something that I might feel like changing my mind about a little later, but, in the present state of our knowledge I would hesitate to recommend planting within the disease infested area. So far as the second question is concerned, the planting of non-immune varieties outside the chestnut growing area, I think there are some pretty good prospects in sight, provided the stock which is obtained is carefully inspected to see that it is free from the blight to begin with, and is watched carefully for at least the first year. The third question, in regard to immune varieties,—if there are any the immunity of which has been demonstrated sufficiently to warrant their being planted,—the Japanese, which are highly resistant, and what some people might consider immune, are the only possibilities so far in sight. The great trouble with the Japanese trees which have been grown in the orchards in parts of the country that have come under my observation, is that they have been grafted on stock which is very susceptible to the disease, and I think it is safe to say that 80 per cent at least, possibly 90 per cent, of the trees that have been killed under these conditions have been killed by the disease girdling below the graft on the susceptible American stock. If we can grow Japanese seedlings under the same conditions, perhaps, that Colonel Sober is raising his Paragons—two years from the seed and then grafting—I don't see why we can't have a tree that is going to be reasonably resistant to the disease; now if we can find some Japanese nuts which are really palatable, really good and sweet, as these three or four that I have mentioned appear to be, I don't see why we cannot have a tree which will be reasonably immune to the disease and at the same time producing an edible nut. The Japanese stock seems to be able to fight off the disease to a certain extent in much the same way that the apple tree can fight off the apple canker, each year the lesion increases a little but each year the growth of the tree overcomes it to a certain extent, and there is a fight between the disease and the tree all the time. Very likely the disease once on the tree will remain on the tree, as far as we can tell at present, for quite a time, but perhaps not kill the tree outright.
Professor Van Deman: Dr. Van Fleet of the Department of Agriculture is working on what seems to be a very fine prospect for raising chestnuts that will be immune and that will have good quality. Japanese chestnuts are the poorest of all in quality but he has taken the chinquapin, which is of high quality but the very smallest of the whole chestnut family, quite common in many of the central and southern states and as far west as Arkansas, has crossed the Japanese chestnut and the chinquapin, and has obtained seedlings that bear very young—when they are not more than four or five feet high sometimes. They are loaded with nuts, and nuts of large size, larger than our ordinary wild chestnut, usually one in a bur just as the chinquapin is and having the high quality of the chinquapin, and he has grown many of those in New Jersey right in the very worst of the disease area and has found some that are exempt. Perhaps some of you have noticed what was published in regard to this in the Rural New-Yorker sometime in the past few months. I have seen the nuts from some of these trees, and while I have never eaten any, I have Dr. Van Fleet's word for it that they are of excellent quality. Now that is something that we might feel quite hopeful about.