Mr. Pierce: It must be an 18 or 20 inch tree to be so badly blighted at the top.
Mr. Reed: Two years, but you see it's pretty well gone. We come now to the Paragon, one of the first trees of that variety ever propagated. It was planted where it stands, by the introducer, Mr. Henry M. Engel, at Marietta, where they had quite an orchard at one time, but the blight is so serious that there are only a few specimens of the trees left. That tree is probably in the neighborhood of twenty-five years old. The next slide shows two trees of the same variety that we may possibly see this afternoon. They are on the farm belonging to Mr. Rush and they are about twenty years old.
Prof. Smith: What have those trees yielded?
Mr. Rush: They yield four, five, six and seven to eight bushels. You can see that they are not far from the barn and the roots run under that barnyard manure pile.
Mr. Reed: What would you consider an average crop?
Mr. Rush: They grow five or six bushels per tree.
Mr. Reed: The greatest attention that has been paid to developing the paragon chestnut in orchard farming has been on the plan Mr. Sober has just shown, by clearing away the mountain side and cutting down everything but the chestnut sprouts. This photograph was taken in a thicket where the underbrush had not been cleared away. Those are a good age now or perhaps a little bit older than we usually graft, aren't they, Mr. Sober?
Mr. Sober: Yes, sir; one or two years old. When they get to be three years old they are past grafting, according to my method.
Mr. Reed: This photograph was taken at Mr. Sober's a little over a year ago, taken in the rain and is not very clear, but it shows the distance between the trees at the time when these trees were four or five years old—is that right?
Mr. Sober: They are eleven year old trees.