This motion was put by President Linton and unanimously adopted.
The President appoints on this committee Mr. Littlepage, Senator Penney and Dr. Canaday.
President Linton: This action will close the discussion relative to the tree planting law. Any other subject that you desire to discuss can be brought before the meeting in any proper manner.
Mr. Bixby: As the secretary noted this morning, perhaps the most extensive program of nut tree planting which has yet been carried out has been on the other side of the world, in China. One of the members of the association is Mr. Wang who lives near Shanghai and is secretary of the Kinsan Arboretum there. Some time ago he obtained some American black walnuts from Japan. He planted them and they grew so much faster than he had anticipated, and I think faster than any other tree with which he was familiar, that he conceived the idea of planting the new highway, which was being made from Shanghai to Hankow, with these American black walnuts. In due course he sent a money order to pay for two thousand pounds to the secretary. Last year was not the best year to get black walnuts, and the secretary forwarded the money order to me and asked me if I could get these walnuts for him. There was more trouble in getting them in New York last year than there usually is, but finally I did get them and had them made up in twenty-two bags and shipped to Mr. Wang at Shanghai. In due course they arrived and he is anticipating great things from them. The growth that he reported of this first lot of black walnuts was something astonishing. It seems to me that they grew the second year ten feet high. It was a very astonishing growth, a much more vigorous growth than I ever heard of their making here. At any rate there are two thousand pounds of American black walnuts that have been shipped to China, and if nothing happens to them they will grow and adorn that new road from Shanghai to Hankow.
Mr. Jones: A matter that will be of interest is that Mr. Wang wrote me a letter in which he says that the black walnut grows three times as fast in China as the Japanese walnut. Here in the nursery we find the Japanese walnut doubles the black walnut in the first two years in growth.
President Linton: We would like to hear from those present who are familiar with trees, as you all are, as to the merits and demerits of the various kinds of trees that we desire to plant. In Michigan the only ones we are considering are the black walnut, the hickory, the butternut and the beech. The beech in our state grows to be a beautiful tree, as it does in most states in our country. In addition to that our state agricultural people are suggesting that we plant the hard maple, which is a fine tree in Michigan, and the basswood, and one or two others, to provide food along certain lines. The hard maple, for instance, produces maple sugar, the basswood the bees draw honey from. The simple and useful trees and shrubs are the only ones in our state that we are giving any consideration to.
Dr. Canaday: What would be the best way to start a hickory along the roadside? From the nut?
President Linton: From my experience with the black walnut I would say that would be the proper way to plant these hickories, to plant the nuts where the trees would be. It is far less expensive than any other method. It is easily cared for by the road men who take care of a section of the road.
Mr. McGlennon: I am interested in the cultivation and culture of the European filbert at Rochester and have been for a number of years, and I believe successfully. In different meetings of this association that I have attended and in correspondence with the officers of the association, filbert culture in this country has been referred to as still in the experimental stage. Now when you have been in a thing for ten or twelve years and have not had any set-back but progress along all lines of activity, I believe you have passed out of the zone of experimentation and have gotten down to doing something. That is what we have done in Rochester with our nursery which I believe is the only thing of that particular kind in the country. Mr. Vollertsen, my collaborator, came to me with this idea years ago. He told me what he believed could be done and what had been done in filbert culture where he had been until about twenty years of age, having worked in a nursery from the time he had been able to do manual labor. In this nursery they had given especial attention to the cultivation of filberts and he had learned their method of propagation. He told me about this and believed it could be done in this country. I corresponded with some of the prominent nurserymen in the New England states and they told me it would be folly to attempt anything like that in this country, that I would be wiped out by the blight. They had tried it with some of the European varieties. Nevertheless I went ahead and imported five plants of twenty leading German varieties from Hoag & Schmidt, a prominent firm of nurserymen in Germany. I turned them over to Mr. Vollertsen having rented land for him and furnished the funds for the fertilization and cultivation of the land, paying a wage to him to go ahead and make the experiment. I wanted to know rather than to believe. His method of propagation was from the layer. Now we have fruited these propagated plants and found them true. We started in with half an acre. We now have two and a half acres, probably fifty thousand plants altogether. We have never had the semblance of blight. Our cultivation has been thorough. Our fertilization has been consistent. Mr. Vollertsen has been on the job very steadily and understands his business thoroughly. I think that this talk of blight is something that we should not take so seriously to heart. On half a dozen occasions some of our good friends have said, "What about the blight; don't you think it will wipe you out?" I think it is well to be prepared for the truth but the same thing might be said if I plant a peach orchard, that in a few years it will be wiped out by the yellows. I can't make myself believe that the matter of blight in filbert culture in this country is a serious menace. The consensus of opinion in this association seems to have been that even if it does appear there are remedies for it. Our esteemed first president, Dr. Morris, when he visited our place in Rochester some years ago when the convention met there, said that he thought we should not worry about it. He was satisfied that if blight appeared it could be controlled by the removal of the blighted part. I believe that the same principle applies to the development of filbert nurseries as to any phase of life, that eternal vigilance is the price of safety. I believe that thorough cultivation, keeping the plants strong and healthy, will help them resist disease. But if blight does appear, by watching closely it can be removed and I think controlled, as suggested by Dr. Morris. Maybe it has been all right up to the present time to be on our guard but there is my work that has been going on for ten or twelve years. During these last two or three years we have been sending our plants all over the country, to California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Canada, and we have been getting fine reports with not a single reference to the appearance of blight. On the contrary they report that our plants are fruiting and they ask for more plants. As a specific instance I can cite a prominent doctor in Louisville, Kentucky, who some years ago got some plants from us and some filbert plants from some other nursery. We had a letter from him the other day in which he spoke in most complimentary terms of the plants he had gotten from us, that they had fruited, were true, and he wanted to know if we could furnish him from fifteen hundred to two thousand plants within the next few years. William Rockefeller on the Hudson, another customer of ours, reports plants doing splendidly and fruiting well. Mrs. Jones of Jones & Laughlin Steel Company reports plants growing splendidly there. Those are just a few of the instances I could cite. As I suggested to some of the gentlemen today at the next meeting it might be well for me to bring specific references from different parts of the country where our plants have been planted and are bearing fruit and are doing well, with no reference whatever to blight having appeared, and I shall be very glad to do that.