Professor Collins: Dr. Van Fleet is doing a fine work. I have seen some of it and gone over the work with him.
Professor Van Deman: He is one of the government people and he is carrying on his experiments here at the Arlington plantation, right across the river.
Dr. Metcalf: Speaking of breeding material, we have six sorts for breeding purposes in the shape of seeds of this very species of Chinese chestnut on which the disease occurs in China. The nut of that tree is of very high quality and good size, and, so far as I can tell, quite as sweet as the American chestnut. If there is no more disease on the trees in this climate than there is in China it would be a very practical tree to grow, as far as we know.
TOP-WORKING SEEDLING PECAN TREES
W. N. Hutt, North Carolina
According to a census we have just completed there are in North Carolina upwards of 50,000 seedling pecan trees. These trees range in age from one to thirty years. Seventy-five per cent of them are of bearing age, but there is probably not one per cent of that number that are profitable bearing trees. In all parts of the pecan country experience has shown that seedling pecans are notably slow in coming into bearing and some trees never bear at all. Those that do bear have nuts that are almost invariably, small, thick-shelled and of indifferent quality. In this respect, however, the pecan tree differs in no way from any of our other classes of fruits. No one would today be so foolish as to try to get a good peach or apple orchard by planting the seeds of these fruits; but this is just what a great many people have been trying to do with pecans.
This attempt to produce pecan orchards from seed has been the origin of the 50,000 trees noted in the census above. Now that we have these seedling pecan trees, are they of any value at all? Can we make anything out of them whatever or must we cut them down and charge up the expenses to the account of experience, and start over again with standard varieties of budded and grafted trees? Years of time and quantities of money have been spent in producing these beautiful but comparatively valueless seedling trees. However, they are far from being a total loss, for in those deep roots and stalwart trunks and spreading branches, there are latent possibilities in abundance. If by some magic power like that of Aladdin's wonderful lamp told of in the "Tales of the Arabian Nights," we could transform these seedling trees in a single night to standard varieties, we would enrich every owner of pecan trees by hundreds of dollars and the aggregate wealth of the state would be increased by millions.
For several years I have been in search of Aladdin's wonderful lamp to enlighten me how to effect this felicitous transformation. Like Aladdin's quest of old the search has been long and wearisome and has led me a tedious road through many vexatious disappointments, but at last I have found the lamp! I have in my power the magic by which a worthless seedling pecan tree can be transformed into a productive standard variety. This magic talisman is simply
Patch-Budding.