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THE PRESIDENT: Would you mind giving us the date of that last letter?
DR. METCALF: That is October 20, 1915.
The other letter signed by Mr. Mayo is as follows, and is dated Oct. 29, 1915:
"Replying to your October 25th letter we do not think that you or your friend need have the least anxiety on account of the chestnut blight reaching your section. This disease seems to be confined to a very small area in northeastern New Jersey, southeastern New York, and southwestern Connecticut. The disease has been in existence in this country since 1842, it has made very little progress, and the highest authorities now state that it seems to be on the wane." (Laughter.)
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MR. LITTLEPAGE: Do the experiments of the Department show any possibility of control of the disease?
DR. METCALF: I don't think that there are any methods of control which can profitably be applied to orchard trees under present commercial conditions. If a man has a few orchard trees which he regards as novelties and to which he is prepared to give very careful attention, I think the disease can be controlled. So far as I can see, the only hope of commercial control lies in none of the present varieties, but in Dr. Van Fleet's hybrids, possibly in the Chinese chestnut, and, aside from the objectionable qualities of the Japanese nut in certain strains of Japanese. With the rapid withdrawal of the wild chestnuts from the market, however, the price of chestnuts may rise, and control methods in orchards become practicable.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. McCoy has been in Pennsylvania and has come back with the very optimistic idea that the chestnut blight was under control up there. I took him out on my farm in Maryland and showed him my trees, and that the only thing that could destroy the trees faster than the blight is a forest fire.
DR. METCALF: Exactly.