DR. MORRIS: Very profitable in parts of Oregon and Washington. They have a large, good crop, which sells locally, but, like most Pacific Coast fruits, the nuts lack flavor and quality. They have size and beauty, but lack quality. The fruits and nuts grown on the Pacific Coast all lack a certain fineness of character, for some reason yet unknown.
You have got to look after your European hazels, and not neglect the orchard. I remember seeing some very beautiful apple trees in central Maine not very long ago—no blight—no codling moth, and the trees free from almost everything in the way of insects or fungous troubles—beautiful, cultivated trees, and beautiful apples on them. I asked another man, one of my acquaintances there, an old farmer, why he didn't set out a lot of similar trees and make a good income. He said, "Well, it won't go." He had a pasture about eight miles north of there, and, said he, "I spent thirty dollars for apple trees to put into an orchard, and I had great ideas about those apples. I set the trees out in that orchard about three or four years ago, and last year when I went up to look at them, there were hardly any apple trees left." He hadn't looked at them for three or four years. (Laughter.) You can't raise hazels that way.
THE SECRETARY: The reason I asked about the commercial value of the hazel is that my own experience has been very unsatisfactory. I got some hazels from Gillet, on the Pacific Coast six or seven years ago, set them out around my place, and they have grown beautifully. I haven't been able to detect any blight on them anywhere. Some of them are fifteen feet high, have grown luxuriantly, and blossom every year, but I haven't seen one nut yet. On the other hand, the other day I visited a man near my home, who told me that he had raised some trees from nuts which he had bought from an Italian grocery on the corner. He gets the nuts when the crop first comes in, and stratifies in wet sand all winter, and he says they all grow. He had some beautiful hazel trees. One I estimated to be twenty feet high. I never saw a hazel tree which approached it. He said it was only five or six years old. Last year he had a fine crop of nuts from it. This year, however, he said that during a warm spell in the winter the staminate bloom came out and was killed, and there were no nuts on the trees. Now it seems to me that there is great uncertainty about the hazels, and I don't know exactly what to advise people to do. People ask me for advice as to what nuts to plant commercially. I don't know whether to advise them to plant hazels or not, and I don't know what varieties to advise people to plant. I don't know how to advise them to overcome this difficulty of the early staminate bloom and the winter killing. I can't now conscientiously recommend people to plant hazel nuts commercially.
DR. MORRIS: Go to Rochester and get some there that bloom every year and that bloom later. My Bony Bush blossoms some three weeks later than the others, I presume. It is a bush that bears well every other year, apparently.
THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further questions about this large family of nut trees of which we have but a small corner of knowledge? If not, we may look to an adjournment.
First, I wish to announce that this afternoon we are going to devote to an excursion around the city, to see some of the most remarkable Persian walnut trees which I think may be found anywhere.
I am asked by Prof. Close to say that the Department of Agriculture has an exhibit of nuts on the fourth floor at 220 Fourteenth Street, Southwest.
Meeting adjourned.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2 P. M.
Meeting called to order by the President.