DISCLAIMER

The articles published in the Annual Reports of the Northern Nut Growers Association are the findings and thoughts solely of the authors and are not to be construed as an endorsement by the Northern Nut Growers Association, its board of directors, or its members. No endorsement is intended for products mentioned, nor is criticism meant for products not mentioned. The laws and recommendations for pesticide application may have changed since the articles were written. It is always the pesticide applicator's responsibility, by law, to read and follow all current label directions for the specific pesticide being used. The discussion of specific nut tree cultivars and of specific techniques to grow nut trees that might have been successful in one area and at a particular time is not a guarantee that similar results will occur elsewhere.

NORTHERN

NUT GROWERS ASSOCIATION

REPORT

OF THE PROCEEDINGS AT THE

EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING

STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

SEPTEMBER 5 AND 6,

1917

CONCORD, N.H.
THE RUMFORD PRESS
1916

Annapolis Pub. Co. Print.

CONTENTS

OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION.

COMMITTEES

STATE VICE-PRESIDENTS

MEMBERS OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

* Life Member

CONSTITUTION

Article I

Name. This society shall be known as the Northern Nut Growers Association.

Article II

Object. Its object shall be the promotion of interest in nut-bearing plants, their products and their culture.

Article III

Membership. Membership in the society shall be open to all persons who desire to further nut culture, without reference to place of residence or nationality, subject to the rules and regulations of the committee on membership.

Article IV

Officers. There shall be a president, a vice-president and a secretary-treasurer, who shall be elected by ballot at the annual meeting; and an executive committee of five persons, of which the president, two last retiring presidents, vice-president and secretary-treasurer shall be members. There shall be a state vice-president from each state, dependency or country represented in the membership of the association, who shall be appointed by the president.

Article V

Election of Officers. A committee of five members shall be elected at the annual meeting for the purpose of nominating officers for the following year.

Article VI

Meetings. The place and time of the annual meeting shall be selected by the membership in session or, in the event of no selection being made at this time, the executive committee shall choose the place and time for the holding of the annual convention. Such other meetings as may seem desirable may be called by the president and executive committee.

Article VII

Quorum. Ten members of the association shall constitute a quorum, but must include a majority of the executive committee or two of the three elected officers.

Article VIII

Amendments. This constitution may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the members present at any annual meeting, notice of such amendment having been read at the previous annual meeting, or a copy of the proposed amendment having been mailed by any member to each member thirty days before the date of the annual meeting.

BY-LAWS

Article I

Committees. The association shall appoint standing committees as follows: On membership, on finance, on programme, on press and publication, on nomenclature, on promising seedlings, on hybrids, and an auditing committee. The committee on membership may make recommendations to the association as to the discipline or expulsion of any member.

Article II

Fees. The fees shall be of two kinds, annual and life. The former shall be two dollars, the latter twenty dollars.

Article III

Membership. All annual memberships shall begin with the first day of the calendar quarter following the date of joining the association.

Article IV

Amendments. By-laws may be amended by a two-thirds vote of members present at any annual meeting.

Northern Nut Growers' Association

EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING

September 5 and 6, 1917

Stamford, Connecticut.

The eighth annual meeting of the Northern Nut Growers' Association was called to order at the Hotel Davenport, Stamford, Connecticut, at 9.30 A. M., the Vice-President, Prof. W. N. Hutt, presiding in the absence of the President, Mr. W. C. Reed.

The meeting opened without formalities with a short business session.

The report of the Secretary was read and adopted as follows:

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY-TREASURER.

Total receipts were a little greater than the year before, receipts from dues a little less. There are several new life members, ten in all now, and the secretary has followed the course adopted some time ago of depositing receipts from life memberships in a savings bank as a contingent fund.

There are 138 paid up members, compared with 154 last year. Fifty members have not paid their dues and there seems to be no other course but to drop them, after repeated notice, though some are old friends.

Four members have resigned and there has been one death, that of Mrs. Charles Miller, of Waterbury, Connecticut.

We have added but 28 new members during the year, while we have lost 55.

There have been 358 members since organization, of whom we still have 138, 220 having dropped out.

Mr. T. P. Littlepage, as chairman of the Committee on Incorporation, reported at some length on the advisability and the possibilities.

On motion of Mr. R. T. Olcott, the question of incorporation was left in the hands of the committee with power.

The following Nominating Committee was elected: Col. Van Duzee, Mr. Weber, Mr. Bixby, Mr. Smith, Mr. Ridgeway.

The following Committee on Resolutions was appointed by the Chair: Dr. Morris, Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Olcott.

Moved by Mr. Littlepage: That the association request the Secretary of Agriculture to include in his estimates of appropriations for the next fiscal year a sum sufficient, in his judgment, to enable the department to carry on a continuous survey of nut culture, including the investigation and study of nut trees throughout the northern states, such nut trees including all the native varieties of nuts, hickories, walnuts, butternuts and any sub-divisions of those varieties, and that a committee of three be appointed to interview the secretary personally to have this amount included in the appropriation.

[Motion carried.]

Mr. Olcott recalled that last year the National Nut Growers' Association secured an appropriation, and he suggested that this would make it easier for the Northern Nut Growers to do so this year.

Mr. Bartlett: It occurred to me that the boy scouts, with their great membership and being often out in the woods, would be valuable to the nut growers' association in hunting native nuts. I took up the matter with Dr. Bigelow of the Agassiz Association, who is also Scout Naturalist and I think he can tell us more about getting the boy scouts interested.

Dr. Bigelow: I would suggest that you enlist also the interest of other organizations for outdoor life. If I knew a little more definitely what is wanted it could be exploited in definite terms in Boys' Life, the official organ of the Boy Scouts of America, which has a mailing list of over 100,000, and which reaches ten or twenty boys each copy. So you have nigh on to 1,000,000 members who would be reached in this way. My predecessor, Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, has organized the Woodcrafters, which consists of both boys and girls. It seems to me that their service should be enlisted. They have done remarkably good work. And there are other organizations such as the Camp Fire Girls. I would suggest that some of you formulate a resolution and let me have a copy of it to publish in Boys' Life.

Dr. Morris: I will say one word in harmony with Dr. Bigelow and the possibility of enlisting the interest of these organizations. One of our members, I think Mr. Weber, has found on a tributary of the Ohio River a thin shelled black walnut that came down with the flood. He has found two specimens at the mouth of the stream and he knows that this particular thin shelled black walnut grows somewhere up that stream. He would give $50 to anybody who would find that black walnut tree.

I will give five dollars every year to any boy scout who wins any of our prizes. That is a permanent offer. Or I will enlarge it perhaps, after we discuss the matter further by including the Camp Fire Girls. I will add others to that list. I will give five dollars to any member of one of those organizations affiliated with us who wins any nut prize in any year, in addition to our regular prizes. Furthermore we will offer to name any prize nut after the discoverer, so that his or her name will go down in history, perhaps causing much fame.

Dr. Bigelow: I have had my attention called to the fact that in the West the beech trees are heavily laden with nuts. It suddenly dawned on me that in all of my boyhood experience as a hunter and tramper, I had never seen one edible beech nut in Connecticut. I know there are many beech trees around Stamford, but I have not been able to find any nuts. I have advertised for them but although I have received more than a hundred packages from over the rest of the country, I have not seen one single beech nut from Connecticut. Some of the old-timers say they were once plentiful. I wonder whether beech nuts have disappeared from Connecticut as have potato balls.

Dr. Morris: In the lime stone regions they commonly fill well. I have a great many beech trees on my place from one year to more than one hundred years of age, and they came from natural seeding, but the seeds in this part of Connecticut are very small and shrivelled. They are not valuable like the ones in western New York, for instance, and I do not remember even as a boy to have known of eastern beech trees with well-filled nuts. Many of these inferior nuts will sprout, however.

Mr. Littlepage: I think Dr. Bigelow has hit upon a point of a great deal of interest. For example, on my farm in Maryland I think there are perhaps three or four hundred beech trees of various sizes, probably none of them under ten years of age and up to fifty, and in the four years that I have been observing these beech trees, there has never grown upon them a single full, fertile beech nut. I have observed very carefully. On my farm in Indiana I have been observing the same thing for probably ten or twelve years, and I have never seen a single filled beech nut. There are some beech trees there two feet in diameter.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

W. C. Reed, Indiana.

(Read by the Secretary.)

Fellow Members Northern Nut Growers' Association, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Our association convenes today under changed conditions not only in this country but throughout the world. Upon the United States rests the burden of feeding the world, or at least a large portion of it. With seven-tenths of the globe's population at war, surely this is a mammoth undertaking.

The government is urging the farmer to increase his acreage of all leading grain crops, to give them better cultivation, and is guaranteeing him a liberal price.

Crop Values.

Crop values have increased until today there is land bringing more than $100.00 per acre for a single wheat crop. Corn has sold above $2.00 per bushel, beans at 20 cents per pound, and hogs at $20.00 per 100 pounds on foot.

Labor Advances.

With these high prices all along the line the price of labor has advanced to the highest point ever known. Surely it is up to the American farmer to husband his resources by the use of labor-saving machinery, by using the tractor and other power machines to conserve horse feed, by the cultivation of all waste land possible and by practicing economy and thrift.

More Intensive Agriculture.

In the more intensive agriculture that is urged upon us the Northern Nut Growers' Association can do a splendid work by the interesting of all land owners in the conservation of the native nut trees and the planting of grafted nut trees in gardens, orchards and yards, to take the place of many worthless shade trees.

Highway Planting.

With the government and states working together in the establishment of market highways and the building of permanent roads, now is the time to urge the planting of trees that will last for this generation and the ones that are to follow. In sections of the country the different kind of nut trees suitable could be selected and, if planted and given proper care, would be a source of large income in the years that are to come.

Community effort is needed for such work and if the members of this association will use their influence it will help to bring this about. There is one county in England where all the roadsides have been planted to Damson plums, which has not only made the landscape more beautiful and furnished the people with much fruit, but the past season has furnished many tons of plums that were picked half ripe for the manufacture of dyes that had become scarce owing to the war.

If such a movement as this had been taken in this country in the planting of nut trees in former years our roadsides today would be more beautiful, the country more healthy, the farmer more independent, having these side crops that require little labor and that could be marketed at leisure. Our soldier boys might today have sealed cartons of nut meats included in their rations on the European battle fronts that would be very acceptable as food and add little to their burden.

Nut Meats in Place of Pork.

If every land owner had enough nut trees to furnish his family with all the nut meats they cared to use, and all the nut bread they would eat, it would go a long way in solving the high cost of pork and beef. The better grafted varieties of the black walnut are specially well adapted for use in nut bread and can be grown in many places where pecans and English walnuts will not succeed so well.

What This Association Has Accomplished.

In looking backward over the past eight years since this association was organized it might be well to review some of the things accomplished. When this organization first came into existence there was a small demand for budded and grafted nut trees, but none were to be had in the hardy northern varieties. Interest was created, best individual trees have been located and new varieties introduced. Methods of propagation have been worked out, public opinion has been moulded, government investigation has been fostered, commercial planting of northern nut trees made possible, and today pecans, English walnuts and best varieties of grafted black walnuts may be had in quantity. This association has caused thousands of nut trees to be planted that would otherwise not have been. Some may ask the question, has it paid? Individually I would say it has not, but collectively it has, and will pay large dividends to future generations by making it possible for a larger food supply at a minimum cost.

Care of Transplanted Nut Trees.

It might be well to urge greater care in the cultivation of transplanted nut trees. Trees should be set fall or early spring while perfectly dormant. If bodies are wrapped the first summer and first winter it will prevent much trouble from sun scald. If mounds of earth one foot high are banked around trees before first cold weather it will often prevent bark bursting which may be caused by freezing of the trees when full of sap, caused by late growth. This mound can be removed the next spring and in case of any winter injury you have plenty of fresh healthy wood to produce a top.

Cultivation should commence early in the spring and be kept up until September first. Never allow weeds to grow or ground to become crusted. Nut trees form new rootlets slowly the first summer and require special care. After the second summer they will stand more neglect, but extra cultivation will be rewarded with extra growth at all times.

Finances.

In looking over the treasurer's report at Washington I find a balance of $21.45, reported at last meeting under date August 14th, 1917. Treasurer reports balance on hand of $14.13 and no obligations. I think he is to be congratulated on being able to make ends meet and issue the reports.

After going over the budget for the coming year I think that we may be able to keep up this record if the membership committee will look after new members and see that all old members renew their membership promptly.

Place of Meetings.

Owing to present war conditions the president would recommend that selection of the next place of meeting be left to executive committee to be fixed later after conditions and crops for next year are better assured. It would seem that some central location might draw the largest attendance and be of greatest benefit to the association for the coming year.

Nut Exhibits.

Nut exhibits should be encouraged as much as possible and prizes offered when finances will permit, or where members offer special premiums. This effort will bring out varieties that are worthy of propagation and valuable trees will be saved to posterity. These exhibits can often be held in connection with local horticultural meetings. It is well for our members to keep a watch for such chances.

REASONS FOR OUR LIMITED KNOWLEDGE AS TO WHAT VARIETIES OF NUT TREES TO PLANT.

Prof. W. N. Hutt, North Carolina.

Agriculturally this continent is about three centuries old. Horticulturally its experience has scarcely reached the century mark. Practically all the commercial fruit industry of the United States is the product of the last half century. Relatively speaking we are quite young and therefore there are a great many things about nut-growing that we may not be expected to know. In the older lands of Europe and Asia they have a horticultural experience going back from ten to twenty centuries.

In this new country the pioneers had necessarily to confine themselves to the fundamentals and it is to be expected that their horticultural operations were confined to a very narrow maintenance ratio. As the country was cleared up and developed certain sections were found to be especially suited to fruit culture. About these centers specialized fruit-growing industries were developed. These planters tried out all available varieties and developed their own methods of culture. As these industries developed horticultural societies were formed for the exchanging of ideas and experiences. In 1847 the American Pomological Society was formed as a national clearing house of horticultural ideas.

The first work the society undertook was to determine the varieties of the different classes of fruits suitable for planting in different sections of the country. Patrick Barry, of Rochester, one of the pioneers of American horticulture was for years the chairman of the committees on varietal adaptation and did an immense amount of work on that line. At the meetings of the society he went alphabetically over the variety lists of fruits and called for reports on each one from growers all over the country. This practice was kept up for years and the resulting data were collated and compiled in the society's reports. In this systematic way the varietal adaptations of the different classes of fruits were accurately worked out for all parts of the country. A similar systematic roll call of classes and varieties of nuts grown by the members of this association would be of immense value to intending planters of nut trees.

In northern nut-growing, however, it may be questioned if we are yet arrived at the Patrick Barry stage. What we need is pioneer planters who have the courage to plant nut trees and take a chance against failure and not wait for others to blaze the trail. It needs men of vision and courage to plant the unknown and look with hope and optimism to the future. So many are deterred from planting by the fact that nut trees are tardy in coming into bearing and uncertain of results. In these stirring times we want men of nerve in the orchard as well as in the trenches. We need tree planters like Prof. Corsan who, at a former meeting of this association when joked about planting hickories, replied that he wasn't nervous and could watch a hickory tree grow. It takes nerve to be an innovator and to plant some radically different crop from what your conservative neighbors all about you are planting.

The Georgia cotton planters wagged their heads and tapped their foreheads when Col. Stuart and Major Bacon turned good cotton land into pecan groves. But the thousands of acres of commercial pecan orchards now surrounding these original plantings showed that these pioneer pecan planters were not lunatics or impractical dreamers, but courageous men of vision, thirty years ahead of their time.

Nut tree planting is not all waiting. It will give the busy man some surprises as I have reason to know from my own limited experience. Ten years ago when I planted my first experimental orchard I set about preparing several other lines of quick maturing experimental work, for I did not expect those trees would have any thing to report for a decade or so. You can imagine how surprised and delighted I was when on the third year there was a sprinkling of nuts, enough to be able to identify the most precocious varieties. The surprise increased to wonder the next year when there was an increased number of nuts on the trees that had borne last year and a number of new varieties came into bearing. In the eighth year when an 800-pound crop of nuts changed that experimental planting into a commercial pecan orchard, I was, to use a sporting phrase, "completely knocked out of the box." The man who thinks there are no thrills in tree planting has something yet to learn. It is the surest sign of a real true-blue horticulturist that he wants to set some kind of new tree or plant.

It is the rarest kind of a plantation that has on it no waste land. Fence rows, ditch banks and rough or stony places are to be found on practically every farm. Such spots too often lie waste or galled or at best are covered with weeds, briars, bushes or useless scrubby trees. These waste places would make a fine trial ground for testing out nut trees. A few fine walnuts, pecans or hickories, or rows of chinquapins and hazels would add profit as well as beauty to these waste and unsightly places found on most farms.

Following old conservative methods the average farmer sets about his house and buildings unproductive oaks, elms and maples, with scarcely a question of a thought that there are as handsome shade trees that will produce pleasure and profit as well. On our lawns and about our door yards we could plant to advantage the Japanese walnut and the hardier types of pecans and Persian walnuts. It would be of interest to try a few seedlings of these classes of nuts. If such practices were followed in the planting of nut trees it would not be long until new and valuable sorts would be found and a great deal of data made available to intending nut planters. I believe that a great deal of good would result from the preparation and dissemination of a circular encouraging farmers in nut planting.

This association is doing a valuable work in offering prizes to locate high class seedling nut trees that will be worthy of propagating. Sooner or later valuable sorts will be found in this way. In this connection it will be wise for this association to solicit the active co-operation of the horticultural workers in the different states. The workers of the agricultural colleges, experiment stations and extension service do a great deal of traveling and have special facilities for getting in touch with promising varieties. The horticulturists of some states have made nut surveys of their states to ascertain their resources in the way of valuable varieties and of conditions suitable for nut culture. The interesting bulletin, "Nut Growing in Maryland," gotten out by Prof. Close, when he was State Horticulturist in Maryland, is a very valuable contribution along this line. It would be well for this association to solicit the co-operation of the trained horticulturists in the northern states to make nut surveys and ascertain definitely the valuable varieties already growing within their borders and what are the possibilities for the production of these types for home purposes for commercial growing. A few of the state experiment stations have taken up definite experimental and demonstration nut projects and are doing valuable work in this line. This association should memorialize the directors of the other stations to undertake definite nut projects and surveys and get the work under way as soon as possible.

While endeavoring to stimulate private, state and national investigations in nut culture, the author would be very remiss if he failed to recognize the very valuable work already done by the zealous, painstaking and unselfish pioneers of northern nut growing. Messrs. Bush and Pomeroy have given to the country and especially to the north and east, two valuable hardy Persian walnuts. Our absent president, Mr. W. C. Reed, of Vincennes, Ind., is doing a great deal in the testing and dissemination of hardy nut trees. Our first president, though an exceedingly busy surgeon and investigator in medicine, finds time to turn his scientific attention to the testing and breeding of nut trees. Some of our brilliant legal friends, too, find time to pursue the elusive phantom of ideal nuts for northern planting.

We cannot go through the growing list of nut investigators nor chronicle their achievements, but we know that when the history of American horticulture is written up ample justice will be done to their labors and attainments. Let each of us do our part in the building up of the country by the planting of nut trees. Let us plant them on our farms, in our gardens and about our buildings and lawns. Let us induce and encourage our neighbors to plant and do all possible to make nut planting fashionable until it becomes an established custom all over the land. It will not then be long before valuable varieties of nut trees will be springing up all over the country. This association will then soon have a wealth of available data at hand to give to intending planters in all parts of the country.

A Member: In Europe they raise a great many nuts that they ship to this country, chestnuts, hazels and Persian walnuts. I understand they grow usually in odd places about the farms, but the aggregate production amounts to a great deal. We could very well follow the lead given by Europe in that particular, at least.

I think we could have for dissemination circulars which would stimulate people to plant nut trees more widely than at present.

The Secretary: This question of nut planting in waste places always comes up at our meetings and is always encouraged by some and frowned upon by others. I do not think we ought to recommend in an unqualified way the planting of nut trees in waste places. I have planted myself, lots of us have tried it, and found that most nut trees planted in waste places are doomed to failure. I do not recall an exception in my own experience. I understand that in Europe the road sides and the fence rows are planted with trees and the farmers get a part of their income in that way. But with us in Connecticut nut planting in waste places does not seem to be a success. It is quite different when you come to plant nut trees about the house and about the barn. They seem to thrive where they don't get competition with native growth and where they have the fertility which is usually to be found about houses and barns. In fact, I have advocated the building of more barns in order that we might have more places for nut trees. I think we should plant nut trees around our houses and barns where we can watch them and keep the native growth from choking them, and where we can give them fertility and keep them free from worms. The worms this year in Connecticut have been terribly destructive. My trees that I go to inspect every two or three weeks, at one inspection would be leafing out, at the next would be defoliated. If such trees are about your house where you can see them every day or two you can catch the worm at its work. So for experimental planting I think places about our houses and barns can be very successfully utilized. When it comes to commercial planting, I think we must recommend for nut trees what we do for peach trees. We must give them the best conditions. I am hoping from year to year that somebody will come forward to make the experiment of planting nut trees in orchard form and give them the best conditions, as he would if he were going to set out an apple or peach orchard. The association has made efforts by means of circulars to interest the experiment stations, schools of forestry and other agricultural organizations. A number of the members of such organizations are members of the association. The work has been taken up to some slight degree in such places as the School of Forestry at Syracuse. I do not recall any others at this moment, although there are some. I will read part of a letter from Professor Record of the Yale School of Forestry: "The only reasons I can think of why the consideration of nut trees is not given more attention in our school are (1) it comes more under the head of horticulture than forestry (2) lack of time in a crowded curriculum (3) unfamiliarity with the subject on the part of the faculty." We would like to interest these faculties in nut growing. We look upon them as sources of education but evidently we are more advanced than they are in the subject of nut growing and it is up to us to educate them.

Col. Van Duzee: Right now when you are at the beginning of nut growing in the North you cannot over estimate the value for the future of records. My heart goes out to the man who comes to us as a beginner and wants to know something definite. Our records are the only thing we can safely give him. The behavior of individual nut trees, the desirability of certain varieties for certain localities—those things are of tremendous value.

No doubt you know that in California they have come to the point in many sections where they keep records of what each individual tree does. I began that some years ago with the commercial planting that I have had charge of for the last twelve years. We now have an individual tree record of every nut produced since these trees came into bearing—about 2500 trees. I went further than that—I kept a record of the value of the different nuts for growing nursery stock so that I might grow trees that would be the very best produced in our section. Now the years have gone by and I have a ledger account with every tree in that 2500 and I know exactly what it has given me. I know how many nuts it has produced. You would be surprised to see the wide discrepancy in those records, the different behavior of individual trees. I wish I could talk to you longer on that subject. It is something I am very enthusiastic about.

By virtue of the records we have kept for years I have found a source of supply for seed nuts and nursery stock which has proved to be a constant performer. I bud this nursery stock from trees with individual records that have proved themselves to be good performers, I have found that certain varieties have proved themselves not worthy of being planted, and certain other varieties have proven themselves at least promising. This last year I took 100 Schley, 100 Stuart, 100 Delmas and 100 Moneymaker trees and planted them all on the same land. Now these trees, you understand, are grown from the stock grown from a nut that I know the record of for years. I know its desirability. The buds are from selected trees whose records I have. More than that, I alternated the rows and the trees in the rows. These trees are now where they have got to stand right up and make a record so that we will know ten years from today what is the best variety for our section.

I do not think I can make myself as clear as I wish I could this morning, but here is the point. If anybody comes to me I can tell him definitely, and I have records in my office to show, what the different varieties are doing and what soil they are growing in. Here in the north where the industry is in its infancy now is the time to start records. When I saw the subject of Professor Hutt's paper, the "Reasons For Our Limited Knowledge as to What Varieties of Nut Trees to Plant," it occurred to me that if you don't now start right in making records, ten years from today you will still have existing one of the principal reasons why you don't know.

Mr. Kelsey: I started out four years ago with English walnuts. I read the account of Pomeroy and so I got a half dozen trees from him. They all died. I got five or six trees from Mr. Jones. I think this is the third year and one of those has some nuts on. I have got now about 150 trees planted in regular rows where I am cultivating them. But I was going to say that four years ago I sent to Pomeroy and asked him if he wouldn't send me a few nuts as a sample. He sent me 16. I cracked two of them. Fourteen of them I put in. I didn't know how to put them in so I took a broom handle, punched a hole in the ground and stuck them in the bottom. I never thought I would get any results from them. They came up in July. They did not come up quick. I suppose I had them so deep. I set them out three years ago. Some of them are as high as this room in three years on cultivated land set out in rows. They have never borne any. No one knows how long it takes for a seedling to bear. It may be two years, or five years, or ten.

Dr. Morris: I want to bear witness on the point that Col. Van Duzee made, the matter of keeping records. The man who keeps good records is a public benefactor because what he learns becomes public property upon the basis of available data. Every one of us should pay attention to that point which Col. Van Duzee has brought out. Unfortunately my records have been kept by my secretaries in shorthand notes and I have had four different secretaries in ten years, and each with different methods of shorthand. They have not had time to write up all the notes, and so I find it difficult to present good nut records when busily occupied with professional responsibilities, which must come first. I had one field filled with young hybrid nut trees. A neighbor's cow got into that field and the boy who came after the cow found her to be refractory. The boy began to pull up stakes with tags marking the different trees and threw them at the cow. Before he got through he had hybridized about forty records of nut trees.

The Chairman: As a horticulturist along experimental lines I find the trouble is to get people to plant trees and properly plant them. I do not think that the average farmer knows how to plant trees. That is why they get such poor results. They plant them where anybody with intelligence would not plant them. We find in the South that we can grow trees if there is protection against fire and stock. If fire is kept out and stock is kept from grazing, nature will cover the land with forest trees. I think that will go a long way to getting nut trees. But a man planting something as valuable as a nut tree wants to take a little more pains than that. I have seen Mr. Littlepage's place where he is raising handsome trees, but he has planted crops around each tree and there is plenty of plant food. You can grow trees almost anywhere if you make the conditions favorable. In hedge rows and odd places, if the forest soil is preserved, you can grow almost any kind of a nut tree. These conditions must prevail or we must make them prevail.

Just another point on the matter of home planting. I wouldn't be a very good preacher if I didn't carry out my own practices. Just to show my faith by my works I want to say that I took out every shade tree at home and put a nut tree in its place. Down south where shade is very valuable they said "that man is very foolish to cut down nice elms and maples like that and put nut trees in their place." It did look so then for a while. Now I have some handsome pecans and Persian walnuts and Japanese walnuts, and this year I get my first dividends from a tree five years old. Of course we have taken care to preserve their symmetry, but I think our nut trees come pretty close to being our best shade tree. I will challenge anybody to find a handsomer tree than a well-grown pecan. It is a very stalwart tree with its branches of waving foliage, which is the characteristic of an ideal shade tree, and yet, in addition to that, it produces in the fall magnificent nuts. So the proposition of home planting is one that pays quick dividends on attention given. I think I have convinced my neighbors that it is a good deal better to raise handsome nut trees than poplars. My neighbor planted Carolina poplars at the same time. He was out there the other morning raking up the leaves and that is all he will have to do until Christmas time.

THE DISEASES OF NUT TREES.

S. M. McMurren, Washington, D. C.

Mr. President and Members: It is a source of great regret with me that I cannot report to you some new and horrible disease attacking nut trees. This makes a more interesting talk.

Last year in Washington I talked to you briefly about the Persian walnut blight which we had definitely established as occurring in the East. Last March the National Nut Growers' Association got very busy and so amended the agricultural appropriation bill that all the funds for national nut investigation were spent for pecan investigation, so it left us up in the air for work in the north. We have, however, been able to continue our observations with the Persian walnut blight and there is only one further point to be emphasized and brought out at this time. Those of you who have informed yourselves on this matter know that the serious period of infection on the Pacific Coast is in the spring. It is a blossom blight. During the past two years the period of infection in the East has been in the late summer and it has not been serious on that account. It is well known that in certain dry springs on the Pacific Coast this blight does not occur and those years the growers are assured of good crops. I think that this investigation, and the bulletin which will soon be forthcoming, will not act as a discouragement for those who want to plant Persian walnuts. I think it should not but should rather encourage planting of these nuts. In spite of the presence of this disease on the Pacific Coast the walnut industry has grown to be very profitable, and if it proves that late infection is the rule in the East there is every reason to believe that the disease will not be so serious. That is practically the only walnut disease worthy of attention at present.

The filbert disease is a fungus disease and Dr. Morris and others are authority for the statement that it can be readily controlled by cutting out.

Dr. Morris: I will show this afternoon that it can be controlled in a way.

Dr. McMurren: We in the department have not been in a position to do any work on the hazel blight so far. The hazel blight is interesting in that it illustrates a principle in plant diseases which it is well to know, that most of our serious plant diseases fall in one of two classes; either a native disease on imported plants or an imported disease on native plants. This filbert blight is very slight on native hazels but very serious on imported European hazels. I do not think there is anything more on the filbert disease, but Dr. Morris will have some interesting things to show you this afternoon.

I want to interject a remark here about the business of planting trees for commercial crops along the road sides. There is more to be considered than the mere matter of planting a tree. Insect pests and diseases have to be taken into consideration. There is nothing that an apple orchard planter more hates to see than a tree out of the orchard. It doesn't receive proper attention and is apt to be a source of disease. I believe that wherever the nut industry has been established on an orchard scale it is a matter that should receive careful thought before trees are planted on the road side. When you have an adequate fertilizing department and can give it careful attention the same as trees in the orchard, all right. But they do not as a rule receive it. Roadside planting perhaps sounds very attractive on the surface and is probably a very good plan in some cases, but I think it is open to grave objections where an orchard industry is in the same section.

The Secretary: I am sorry that Mr. C. A. Reed is not here to take up the discussion of the walnut blight, because I think he takes a little more serious view of it than Mr. McMurren.

Mr. McMurren: I know he does.

The Secretary: That is right that Mr. Reed does, and I am glad he is here (Mr. Reed having just entered) to talk it over. Mr. Jones is also here. Mr. Jones is a close observer and has followed it in the field from the beginning. This matter of walnut bacteriosis is a very important one. Here is the walnut industry just in its infancy. We want to know whether this walnut bacteriosis is threatening such proposed industry seriously or not. We know it is a very serious thing in California. Can we safely begin planting English walnut trees or is the question of the seriousness of bacteriosis so serious that we should not plant extensively until we know more about it. Mr. McMurren has been saying a few words about bacteriosis in which he has not given us an impression of seriousness. I think Mr. Reed will give us some remarks on that matter.

Mr. Reed: I do not like to go up against Mr. McMurren. He is the disease man. He is the last word in the government. I am only a second fiddle when it comes to diseases but I must say that I have not a very optimistic feeling over the blight situation. I have been depending very largely on him to give us information.

The Secretary: Where did you find it, Mr. Reed?

Mr. Reed: Speaking for the East only, for the part of the country that we are directly interested in, I have visited a number of the walnut sections. I think I have tried to reach all of them and in nearly every place that I have been to in the last year or two there has been blight. Several of the orchards that have been most widely advertised have blight, according to Mr. McMurren's identification. I went all the way from Georgia to Northwestern Pennsylvania and Northern New York State last year to be present when the crops were gathered from orchards of those sections, and in one of those orchards, one at North East, Pennsylvania, the crop was what I would call about 65 per cent failure due to blight. The other orchard, one near Rochester, was not badly blighted, but there was a very light crop, not over 10 per cent of a crop, but still there was some blight there. Now, I do not know just what Mr. McMurren has said. I do know that he does not feel very badly alarmed over the blight situation in the East and I would rather hear him talk and Mr. Rush, and Mr. Jones.

Mr. Bartlett: I would like to know what the chief characteristics of the blight are.

Mr. McMurren: The ordinary late infection in the East begins with a little spot on the husk around the 1st of July, and that merely spreads until just about the time they fall off the tree. When the blight infection strikes it it stains the nut badly. The point I want to make is that you get the nuts anyhow. Mr. Littlepage, do you recall the trees in Georgetown? The blight there is a very late infection. It is not a thing that I can say should be discouraging. Blights are all over, the pear blight, the apple blight, the lettuce blight. If we can make the crop in spite of it I don't see why we should be unduly alarmed. I think there are a good many other factors to be taken into consideration in planting on a large scale and to make the question hinge on the blight is not right. Spraying is of no avail. I don't think the walnut growers should be discouraged because even in California where it is most serious the industry is still profitable.

Mr. Jones: Some times the husk worm may spoil the husk and that may be confused with the blight. So far Mr. Rush has had the blight ever since I have known his trees. Last year the blight was more prevalent than this year. This year I estimated the loss in the nuts about 10 per cent. Last year I think it ran one-quarter.

The Secretary: Would those nuts be ruined?

Mr. Jones: Some of them would be and some of them not.

The Secretary: One-quarter would be affected by blight and some of those would be good but not all?

Mr. Jones: I don't know what proportion. If the nut when taken out of the husk is black, it would not be worth much. You can eat them but they are not marketable.

NOTES ON THE NUT BEARING PINES AND ALLIED CONIFERS.

Dr. Robert T. Morris, New York

Among the food trees of the world of the nut bearing group the palms with their many species of cocoanuts probably stand first, the pines next, and the chestnuts third in order, so far as food supply for various peoples is concerned. Then come the almonds, walnuts, hazels, hickories and other nut bearing trees, the nuts of which have been somewhat carelessly looked upon as luxuries rather than as an important pantry full of good substantial calories to be turned into human kinetics.

The pines and allied conifers like Araucaria and Podocarpus will take their respective places in furnishing food supply for us all when the need comes. Such need is already close upon our new vista of war supplies. The squirrels and mice this year will eat thousands of tons of good food that our soldiers would be glad to have. The particular advantage in planting nut bearing pines rests in the fondness of these trees for waste places where little else will grow, and they need less attention perhaps than any other trees of the nut bearing group. For purposes of convenience in description I shall group all of the conifers together under the head of pines in this paper, although in botany the word "Pinus" is confined to generic nomenclature.

Up to the present time we have not even developed our resources to the point of utilizing good grounds very largely for any sort of nut tree plantations. In accordance with the canons of human nature men work hardest, and by preference, with crops which give them small returns for their labor. Riches from easily raised crops go chiefly to the lazy folks who don't like work. On the way to this meeting some of you perhaps noticed near Rye on the west side of the railroad track, a chicken farm on a side hill and a rich bottom land which had been ditched and set out to about three hundred willow trees along the ditch banks. Now if the owner of this property had set out English walnuts in the place of the willows, each tree at the present time, at a low estimate, might be bearing five dollars worth of nuts per year per tree, and I am, sure that would be a much larger income than the owner gets from his chickens—an income obtained certainly with much less trouble, because neighbors cannot break in at night and carry off walnut trees of such size. Two or three weeks from the present time you will observe people everywhere in this section of the country raking up leaves from various willows, poplars and maples, when they might quite as well be raking up bushels of nuts of various kinds instead of just leaves.

I presume that the extensive planting of pine trees for food purposes will have to wait until we have advanced to the point of putting other kinds of nut trees upon good ground first. Pines will be employed for the more barren hillsides when the folks of three hundred years from now begin to complain of the high cost of living.

Among some thirty or more species of pine trees which furnish important food supply for various peoples I exhibit nuts from only sixteen species today, because much of the crop comes from Europe and from Asia. I could not obtain a larger variety of specimens on account of the present interest of people in the game which military specialists play wherever industrious nations have saved up enough money to be turned over to their murder experts. In the pine trees we have opportunity for combining beauty and utility. As a group they are mountain lovers preferring localities where the air drainage is particularly good, but many of them will grow thriftily and will fruit well on low grounds. Fine nuts range in character from the rich, sugary, oily and highly nitrogenous nut of the Mexican piñon to the more starchy bunya bunya of Australia, as large as a small potato and not much better than a potato, unless it is roasted or boiled. Yet this latter pine is valuable for food purposes and the British Government has reserved one forest of the species thirty miles long and twelve miles wide in which no one is allowed to cut trees.

The nut of the Araucaria imbricata has constituted a basis for contention among Indian tribes in Chile for centuries, and perhaps more blood has been shed over the forests of this pine than over any other single source of food supply in the world. We do not know if the Pinus imbricata will fruit in the climate and at the latitude of New York, but I know that at least one tree of the species has lived for twenty years on the Palmer estate here in Stamford.

Some of the smaller pine nuts like those of the single-leaved pine, or of the sugar pine, are delicious when cracked and eaten out of hand, but the smaller pine nuts are pounded up by the Indians with a little water and the thick, rich, creamy emulsion like hickory milk when pressed out, is evaporated down to a point where the milk can be kept for a long time without decomposition. In addition to the nuts of the sugar pine, the Indians collect the sugar of dried juice which exudes at points where cuts have been made in the tree for the purpose. Incidentally, the sugar pine is one of our finest American trees anyway. Botanists tell us that it grows to a height of two hundred and seventy-five feet, and travellers say that it reaches three hundred feet. The latter people having actually seen the trees we may know which estimate to accept.

Aside from the beauty of most pines and the majesty of some of them, their utility is not confined to nuts alone. Timber and sap products are very valuable. The sugar pine in the latitude of New York is hardy, but does not grow as rapidly as it does in the West. The same may be said of the Jeffrey bull pine, but I shall show you some thriftier trees of this latter species tomorrow on my property. A very pretty striped nut is that of the Pinus pinea. This is the Italian pignolia, and you may buy them in the confectionery stores in this country. They are used as a dessert nut chiefly, but form an important food supply in some parts of Europe. The Swiss stone pine, Pinus cembra, is one of the hardy nut pines, fruitful in this vicinity, and the Pinus Armandi, the Korean pine and the Lace-bark pine from central China, are hardy and fruitful in this vicinity, to our knowledge.

Two very handsome pine nuts are those of the Digger pine, Pinus Sabiniana and the Big-cone pine, Pinus Coulteri. Both trees are hardy in this latitude, but I have not been able to locate any which are of bearing age as yet. The nuts have a rich dark brown or nearly black and tan shading. The nut of the Digger pine is very highly prized by the Indians and is larger and better in quality than the nut of the Big-cone pine which looks so much like it.

Nuts of the Torrey pine have been somewhat difficult to secure for planting, because they are esteemed so highly for food purposes that they have been collected rather closely by local people in the small area in which this species is found, on our Pacific Coast. It is improbable that the Torrey pine will be hardy much above our most southern states.

We do not advertise dealers in our association as a rule, but Mr. Thomas J. Lane, of Dresher, Pennsylvania, is not likely to make any great fortune from his sale of pine nuts to us. Consequently, I am stating at this point that Mr. Lane has offered to go to the trouble of securing pine nuts from different parts of the world for our members who wish to plant different species experimentally. I have given him a list of species to be kept permanently on file, and the list is marked in such a way that ones which are known to be hardy, semi-hardy, or fruitful in the latitude of New York may be selected for experimental planting. I hope that some of our southern planters will plant South American, Asiatic, African and Australian species of nut pines for purposes of observation. Mr. Lane will get the seed for them.

I have included among the specimens here today nuts of the ginkgo because that tree belongs among the conifers in natural order. It is an ancient tree which should not fit into this time and generation, but it has gone on down past the day when it belonged on earth. Its prehistoric enemies have died out, so the ginkgo tree has come rolling along down the centuries without enemies and at the same time with many peculiarities. Comparatively few of the trees are females, but the tree grows heartily in this latitude and one may graft male ginkgos in any quantity from some one female. The nut of this tree is rather too resinous to suit the American palate, but the Chinese and Japanese visitors to the Capitol grounds at Washington greedily collect the nuts from a bearing female tree growing there.

Most of the pine nuts have a resinous flavor, but as a class they are so rich and sweet that this is not disagreeable. The nuts of the single-leaf pine and our common piñon, Pinus edulis, are delicious when eaten out of hand and both of these trees are hardy in this latitude, but they do not grow as rapidly here as they do upon the arid mountains and under the conditions of their native habitat.

In Europe and Asia pine nuts for the market are cracked by machinery or by cheap hand labor, and I presume that we may eventually hull some of the smaller ones as buckwheat is hulled. If the contents of the smaller nuts are extracted by the Indian method of grinding them up with a little water and then subjecting them to pressure, the waste residue will probably be valuable for stock food of the future, very much as we now use oil cake.

When planting nuts of pine trees I would call the attention of horticulturists to one very important point. The nuts must be planted in ground that does not "heave" in the spring time when the frost goes out. Many of the pine nuts send down a rather slender root at first without many side rootlets, and when the frost opens the ground in the spring the young trees are thrown out and lost. Here is another point of practical importance. Do not plant pine seed where stock can get at the young shoots in March. The little gems look so bright and green, so fresh and attractive when the snow goes off that cows and sheep, deer, squirrels and field mice will all try to collect them. Young pines should be grown in half shade during their first two years. They will require weeding and nice attention on the part of a lover who wishes to be polite to them.

Question: Is there any difficulty in harvesting the crops, do the cones shed?

Answer: With some species the cones are shed before they are fully opened. They are collected and stored until the nuts can be beaten out. Other species retain the cones until the nuts have been shed. The branches are shaken and the nuts collected from tree to tree by the beaters and spread out upon the ground.

Sometimes coarse sheeting or matting is carried from tree to tree by the beaters and spread out upon the ground.

Question: At what age will they bear?

Answer: Pines bear rather late as a rule. I doubt if very many of them will bear in less than 10 years from seed.

Question: Would it be possible to produce grafted trees?

Answer: Yes, without much difficulty. Undoubtedly you could get bearing wood from old trees and graft on young trees, or graft on other species. They may be grafted back and forth like the ornamental firs and spruces of the nurserymen.

Question: They don't compass, do they. If you cut them off, do shoots come out of the stumps?

Answer: Not as a rule. Adventitious buds belong to few pine trees. They graft conifers when the stocks are young.

Question: Of those that you suggest, what would be the best here?

Answer: The Korean, the Bungeana or lace-bark, the Swiss stone pine, and the Armandi. These can be counted on to bear in the vicinity of New York. Several other species not yet tried out may bear well here, but I have not gone over the trees on estates very extensively as yet with that question in mind.

Question: Are any of these specially good for the South?

Answer: Yes, most of the pine nuts that I have shown here will grow south of Maryland and seven of the best pine nuts in the world belong to our Southwest.

Question: Is there any more trouble with the cows and squirrels over nut pines than there is with ordinary pine trees?

Answer: No, excepting that you don't miss the ordinary kinds so much. It is largely a matter of comparative interest.

NOTES TAKEN ON AN EXCURSION TO MERRIBROOKE, THE COUNTRY PLACE OF DR. ROBERT T. MORRIS, AT STAMFORD, CONN., SEPTEMBER 5, 1917.

Dr. Morris Conducting the Party.

(1) Taylor shagbark hickory tree, overhanging the entrance-gate. A tree remarkable for annual bearing and for nuts of high quality, thin shell, large size, and excellent cleavage. Among hundreds of hickories examined, many of them in response to prize offers, this tree at the entrance furnishes one of the very best nuts of the lot.

(2) Buckley hickory (Hicoria Buckleyi) from Texas. Supposed not to be hardy in this latitude. Perfectly hardy, but not growing as rapidly as it does at home. Very large roundish thick shelled nut with a kernel of good quality if you can get it. Kernel has a peculiar but agreeable fragrance.

(3) Another southern species, the North Carolina hickory (Hicoria Carolinae-septentrionalis). Note the small, pointed, dark colored buds and beautiful foliage. The tree is perfectly hardy in Connecticut. This shagbark bears a small thin shelled nut of high-quality and it will be particularly desirable for table purposes. The tree grows thriftly in Connecticut.

(4) Carolina hickory. Grafted on native shagbark.

(5) A group of Korean nut pines (Pinus Koraensis). Raised from seed and now six years of age. One of the valuable food supply pines of northern Asia. Like most eastern Asiatic trees the species does well in eastern North America.

(6) A central Asian prune (Prunus Armeniaca). Without value for the fleshy part of the drupe, but with a nut like that of the apricot, highly prized for its kernel. The tree is hardy and thrifty, but rather vulnerable to a variety of blights belonging to Prunus.

(7) An ordinary black walnut grafted to the Lutz variety. A very large nut with good cleavage, good color and good quality.

(8) Alder-leaved chestnut (Castanea alnifolia) from central Georgia. One of the most beautiful of the American chestnuts, with more or less of the trailing habit, running over the ground like the juniper, and apparently not subject to blight. In Georgia it is an evergreen, but in Connecticut it is deciduous, although sometimes a few green leaves are found in the early spring if they have been covered by snow or by loose dead leaves during the winter. The nut is of high quality and fair size. There are a number of hybrids between this and other chestnuts at Merribrooke, but not bearing as yet.

(9) A group of common papaws (Asimina triloba), two of them grafted. The Journal of Heredity offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best American papaw, and the prize was awarded to the Ketter variety, the fruits of which weigh about one pound each. Seven little trees of this species were secured and two larger papaw trees grafted from cuttings when the seven were set out. Papaws grow well in this part of Connecticut, and because of the high quality of the fruit should be more largely planted.

(10) Mills persimmon. One of a group of several varieties that are being cultivated in this country. Hardy and thrifty in Connecticut.

(11) A group of Jeffrey bull pines (Pinus Jeffreyi) from Colorado. One of the nut pines. Supposed to do its best in the arid mountains of the West. Perfectly hardy and thrifty with beautiful bluish-green foliage in Connecticut.

(12) Himalayan white pine (Pinus excelsa). One of the nut pines and with remarkably handsome foliage.

(13) A group of Chinese pistache nut trees (Pistacia sinensis). At Merribrooke it has the habit of frequently growing twice in one year and sometimes three times in one year. The shoots will grow a foot or more and then make resting buts early in July. After about ten days of resting the buds burst, new shoots grow again and rest for the second time in the early part of September. If we have a warm moist fall the buds burst for the third time and make a third growth. This third growth winter-kills without injury to the tree, however. The significance of the growth presumably relates to the tree being an inhabitant of an arid country, where it has adapted itself to the rainfall of that country. I do not know if the trunk adds a new ring of wood after each resting period, but it likely enough does so.

(14) Moneymaker pecan. Perfectly hardy and thrifty. It has not borne as yet and there may be a question of the season being long enough for ripening the nut. At the left a Stuart pecan, that comes from the very borders of the Gulf of Mexico. Sometimes the smaller branches winter-kill badly and at other times they do not. It is remarkable that a tree from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico should live here at all in the winter.

(15) A field of six-year-old trees. Most of them the result of placing bitternut hickory pollen on staminate butternut flowers. The trees have not borne as yet and we can not tell if they are true hybrids or parthenogens. Parthenogenesis occurs readily with many nut trees. Pollen of an allied species which does not fuse with the female cell to make a gamete may, nevertheless, excite a female cell into division and the development of a tree. Such a tree would be expected to show intensified characteristics belonging to the parent. This lot of trees notable for the fact that some are very small for their age and some very large.

(16) A group of Japanese chestnuts. They blight and die and blight and live and are not given much attention as they are of little value anyway. The chestnut blight (Endothia parasitica) attacks the Japanese chestnut about as freely as it does the American chestnut. The trees do not die from it quite so quickly and may bear for some years before dying.

(17) A group of Japanese persimmons in a protected corner of a west-facing side hill. Most of the Japanese persimmons are not hardy in Connecticut, but an occasional variety given a moderate degree of protection will manage to live pretty well. They are uncertain trees, however, as two of the trees grafted to Bennett Japaneses persimmons from Newark, N. J., had two-year-old shoots winter-killed this year. These were on low ground. I shall put my other Bennetts on hill sides.

(18) American sweet chestnut grafted upon Japanese stock. Ordinarily Asiatic and American chestnuts do not make very satisfactory exchange stocks. In this case the American chestnut happens to be doing very well. The variety is known as the Merribrooke. Among the many thousands of chestnut trees here when I bought the place this one bore the best nut of all, very large and of high quality, and beautifully striped with alternate longitudinal stripes of dark and light chestnut color. The parent tree was one of the very first to go down with the blight ten years ago, and the standing dead trunk was removed at the time when I cut out five thousand dead or dying chestnut trees. Stump sprouts of the Merribrooke variety survived for grafting purposes, and I have now kept the variety going by patient grafting ever since, on new stocks, hoping to carry the variety along until this epidemic of blight runs out of its protoplasmic energy.

(19) Ordinary Japanese chestnut. With fairly good crop of large nuts, but not of good quality, except for cooking purposes.

(20) A group of hybrids resulting from placing the pollen of the Siebold Japanese walnut upon the pistillate flowers of our butternut. The young trees have not borne as yet.

(21) Hybrids between the common American hazel and the European purple hazel. There are a number of these hybrids, and none of them with nuts better than those of either parent, consequently I give them little attention. Some of the hybrids, not as yet bearing, may prove to be more valuable. We have to make lots of hybrids in order to get a small percentage of important ones. In this particular lot the hybrid has taken on a habit of the mother parent, the common American hazel, growing long stoloniferous roots, an undesirable feature.

(22) The Golden Gem persimmon, laden with fruit. Grafted upon the stock of a staminate common persimmon.

(23) Early Golden persimmon. Bearing heavily, a variety grafted upon common persimmon stock.

(24) A group of Chinese chestnut trees (Castanea mollissima). Very beautiful trees, worthy of a position on almost any lawn, the foliage is bright and shining, and the thrifty growth very attractive. The species is practically immune to blight, sometimes at a point of injury bark blight will appear, but it spreads very slowly, is easily cut out and does not reappear at that point. It will be a success in Connecticut. The nut is not quite up to our native chestnut in quality, but it is larger in size and a first rate nut on the whole. The tree comes from the original home of the blight, and the two plants having lived together for ages the law of survival of the fittest has given us this chestnut tree, which can largely take the place of our lost American chestnut. The tree does not grow to be quite so large as our chestnut, but I am making hybrids between this species and three species of American chestnuts, and may find some remarkable ones eventually.

(25) Two young nut pines with lost labels. I shall probably not be able to determine the species until they bear cones.

(26) A number of black walnut trees grafted with several varieties of English walnut (Juglans regia). There is particular advantage in grafting English walnut upon black walnut stock for the reason that mice are extremely destructive to English walnut roots in winter time. Furthermore black walnuts will grow in soil that is distinctly acid in reaction, while the English walnut demands a neutral or alkaline soil. The nearest tree of this group had new shoots of the Rush English walnut nearly six feet long, which blew off last week in a wind storm because they had not been braced sufficiently. It is very important when grafting nut trees to fasten strong bracing sticks alongside of vigorous shoots and tying them with sisal tarred cord, which holds good for two years.

(27) Appomattox pecan, Busseron pecan, and Major pecan. All three trees growing very thriftily and all set nuts this spring, but did not hold them. This is the habit of young hickories and walnuts rather largely. None of my pecan trees are old enough as yet to fruit well. I do not know what varieties will find our season long enough for ripening purposes. That particular feature of pecan raising is quite as important as the mere question of hardiness in Connecticut.

(28) A little old butternut tree by my garden. This has been the mother of practically all my hybrids between butternuts and other species of walnuts. This little old tree bears flowers every year and is very conveniently situated for hybridizing work.

(29) An English walnut tree near the garden gate is growing thriftily, making sometimes four feet in a year, but as a seedling has not borne as yet.

(30) Pecan seedling with buds of Busseron recently inserted. They are fastened in place with waxed muslin and then painted with ordinary white paint. I use that a great deal in place of grafting wax, but make the paint thick and heavy so that little free oil runs in between the cambium layers when grafting or budding. Paint seems to be harder and better than liquid grafting wax if it has no free oil.

(31) A rapidly growing Chinese walnut (Juglans sinensis). Very much like Juglans regia. The nuts have prominent sutures and the kernel is rather more oily than that of the English walnut, but of very good quality, nevertheless.

(32) A number of hickory trees of different species grafted by my favorite method, unless we call it "budding." I call it "the slice graft," and have not known any one else to try it. A slice of bark from one inch to four inches in length is removed from the stock and this area is fitted with a slice of about the same length and breadth, carrying a bud or spur cut from the guest variety. On one of these young hickories you observe I made three slice grafts and all of them have taken with a very thrifty growth of the Taylor variety. One point of importance, I believe, is to have the slice from the guest variety a trifle smaller than the slice from the host stock. The guest slice is bound firmly to the host with waxed muslin.

(33) Paragon chestnut heavily loaded with burs. This particular tree is said to belong to a variety that is much advertised, but there is some question if it is a peculiar variety of the Paragon, because Mr. Engel, of Pennsylvania, is said to have furnished his own Paragon chestnut scions when the other people were short of stock. If the nursery firm that has put out this Paragon chestnut on the market with so much vigor and at such expense had been a little more frank everybody would have profited. They have made a point of advertising the Paragon chestnut as blight resistant, which it is not; consequently, the country is full of disappointed customers. The dealers should have said something more or less as follows: "This chestnut blights freely, but it bears so well and so abundantly and with such a good nut that people can afford to plant it in large acreage and let it blight, carrying it along with about the degree of attention that one would naturally give to good apple trees." Had the dealers only said something like that, the members of our Association who receive very many letters from all over the country asking about this particular chestnut would have advised its purchase in large quantities. Prospective customers are shy of nurserymen in general. They write to members of our Association asking who is reliable. People have learned what we stand for.

(34) A hybrid between a pecan and a bitternut hickory. A large handsome thin shelled nut, but bitter. The great vigor of growth of the seedlings of this hybrid, which comes from Mr. G. M. Brown, of Van Buren, Ark., would seem to make this hybrid variety of remarkable value as grafting stock for other hickories. The nuts are exceptional in carrying the type form of progeny.

(35) Two rows of many species of nut trees planted in thick glazed earthenware pots. The pots are about four feet in depth and with round perforations. I had these made to order. I sunk them in the ground to the level of the rim and then planted these trees in the pots under the impression that they would remain dwarfed on account of the confinement of the roots, and that I would have a conveniently placed series for experiments in hybridization. The experiment was not a success. I knew that growing trees would move rocks, but had no idea that roots protruding through these holes in heavy glazed earthenware would be able to break the pots. The roots have done just that, and whenever a tree in a pot becomes large enough the protruding roots break the pot to pieces, and the tree marches straight along to its original destiny.

(36) One of a group of European chestnuts from seed brought me by Major L. L. Seaman. The parent tree is famous in England for its enormous size and heavy bearing; it is said to be centuries of age and is growing upon the estate of Sir George B. Hingley, Droitwich, Worcestershire, England. My young trees are growing very thriftily. They are showing some blight spots, but this has been controlled by cutting out and painting.

(37) A group of vigorous young trees, the result of placing pecan pollen on the pistillate trees of Siebold walnut. They show the Siebold parentage so distinctly that I imagine them to be parthenogens, but we cannot tell to a certainty until they bear fruit.

(38) A hillside set out with a large number of common bush chinkapins from the East, tree chinkapins from Missouri and a number of hybrids. The chinkapins and the alder-leaved chestnuts on this side hill have been so blight resistant as to require almost no attention, and for that reason I am making hybrids between the chinkapin and the alder-leaved chestnut and the Chinese chestnut in the hope of making an excellent combination of chinkapin quality and Chinese size. Up to the present time none of my hybrids have been as valuable as either parent, with the exception of two. Two of the hybrids bear nuts about the size of the average American sweet chestnut and of first rate quality. These two hybrid trees have shown no sign of blight as yet.

(40) A hybrid between an American chestnut and a chinkapin. It blights freely like its American parent. Some of the hybrids do that while others show the resistance of the chinkapin parent. This particular tree grows lustily, and I have taken the trouble to cut out the blight every year. The leaves and general appearance are very closely like the common American chestnut. When it first began to bear, the nuts were of the chinkapin type, a single nut to the bur and hardly to be distinguished from other chinkapins. A year or two later the nuts changed in appearance, becoming distinctly lighter in color and with peculiar longitudinal corrugations of the shell. A year or so later still the tree made another change, and it now bears two or three nuts to the bur like the American chestnut, the nuts retain their light color and peculiar corrugation.

(41) A group of European hazels (Corylus avellana). Several years ago the Prince of Colloredo-Mannsfeld was visiting Merribrooke. His Highness was much interested in the experimental work in nut trees and later sent me a number of hazel nuts from one of his estates in Bohemia. Among the hazel bushes which grew from these nuts there was one which bore large, long, thin-shelled nuts of high quality. This bush, as you observe, has rather small dark leaves and stout, crooked branches. At one of the meetings of the Association I spoke of the bush as having a bony look, and Prof. J. Russell Smith referred to it in discussion as the "Bony Bush" hazel, and that name has been retained. I have grafted a number of other American and European hazels from this bush and I have sent scions to friends.

(42) A Cook shagbark hickory from Moscow, Ky., grafted upon bitternut stock. This variety bears a very large thin-shelled, irregular nut, with rather poor cleavage, but the quality of the kernel is of such distinct value that I prize the variety.

(43) An example of the spur graft. A common T cut is made in the bark of the stock and then a slice of guest bark carrying a small branch or spur is inserted. In this particular case I put in a branch about ten inches in length and you see that it is growing very well.

(44) My beautiful Merribrooke chestnut grafted upon an ordinary American chestnut stock growing by the roadside. Five years ago I noticed this little chestnut tree growing by the roadside with two stems. One of the stems was blighted and I cut it off and stopped the blight for the time being. The following year the other stem blighted and I trimmed out the blight and sprayed the stem with pyrox. In the following year I grafted the stock, but blight appeared at another point, the blight was cut out, and the stem again sprayed. In the following year blight appeared again, but at another point, and after cutting it out I put on tanglefoot, simply because I happened to have some with me when passing the tree. This year the stem has blighted again and I have cut out the blight and sprayed it, and I shall now whitewash a large part of the stock with whitewash containing a little carbolineum. The graft now in its third year is bearing one big bur. The interesting point is that this tree has blighted every year for five years, and I have kept it going along by giving it attention. This means if we are willing to take the trouble we can get the best of the blight, even with such a remarkably vulnerable tree as this one proves to be.

(45) A barren hillside covered with very handsome red pines eleven years of age, some of them grow nearly two feet per year. The soil is sandy and gravelly glacial till which will raise little else beside feather grass and sumac. The red pines are not nut pines, and attention is called to them incidentally because of their value for growing upon this sort of soil.

(46) A Korean chestnut filled with burs. The Korean chestnut does not blight quite so readily as the American chestnut, and certain individuals are fairly blight resistant. I raised several hundreds of them, but almost all of them are dead. A fairly large number are growing well and bearing without much attention. The nut is pretty good, but coarser than that of the American chestnut.

(47) A group of Tamba chestnuts from Japan. This is the favorite chestnut of the Japanese. I secured a number of the nuts, sprouted them and planted them out here in rows, intending to transplant them to permanent sites later. Finding that they were going to blight badly, I have neglected them and have allowed them to stand. One little tree among them bore a single bur at eighteen months of age and has borne steadily ever since with a heavy crop this year. This particular tree has not blighted, but its nut is coarse and of little value.

(48) When collecting walnuts I obtained a lot of nuts from a correspondent from the Mogollon Mountains in Arizona. The nut resembles that of Juglans rupestris, but is larger and thicker shelled. No one knows whether it is an undescribed species or only a distinct variety of Juglans rupestris. Several of the nuts sprouted, but various accidents happened to them and this tree now, seven years old, is the only one of the lot living. It looks very different from any American walnut I have ever seen. In fact, it looks so much like a stunted heart nut that I suspected that one of these nuts might have gotten into the lot by accident. In digging down about the stem, however, I found only the shells of a Mogollon walnut. We can not tell what the tree will bring forth, as it is not bearing as yet.

(49) Two groups of chestnut trees of the McFarland variety, about eighteen years of age. They grow and blight and bear, but have not blighted to the point of killing altogether. They have been neglected because the nut has not much value.

(50) A group of Merribrooke hazels. Some years ago I devoted several weeks to examining hundreds of hazel bushes in this part of the country, where they are a pest, and I also visited other hazel localities at a distance. Among all the bushes examined the best nut was found on my own property and I learned later that this particular bush had been known among the boys of the locality for a century. The nut is of large size for an American hazel, thin shelled, of high quality. This group consists of transplants of root progeny from the parent bush.

(51) A Horn hazel (Corylus cornuta, commonly wrongly designated as Corylus rostrata). A species fairly abundant in Connecticut, and I transplanted these bushes because they happened to have a tremendously long involucre. The nut of the horn hazel is not of such good quality as that of the common American hazel, and I have not succeeded in making hybrids between this and other hazels as yet. The hazels are very ancient in descent and each species likes to retain particular identity.

(52) A number of stocks of red birch, white birch and scrub oak grafted with European hazels and chinkapins, but the grafts all died. The grafting was done as an experiment in the hope that we might possibly utilize our waste lands which are covered with birch and scrub oak by grafting these trees with hazels and chinkapins. Some of the grafts lived for such a long time and put out such long shoots that the experiment will be tried again next year. It would not seem worth while, excepting for the fact that it was a bad spring for grafting anyway, and hazels did not even catch on hazels, though they caught freely last year. The Japanese do grafting on stocks widely different from the scions, but we have not developed that particular feature in this country as yet.

(53) Asiatic tree hazels (Corylus colurna). This species makes a tree as large as the common oaks and bears heavily. The nut is about the size of that of the common American hazel. The tree is very beautiful, and I am using it for grafting stock and for hybridizing.

(54) Sprouting cages. A double row of galvanized wire cages sunk four inches into the ground and about four inches free above ground, filled with sandy loam and used for sprouting any nuts which are to be employed in experimental work. Each cage is fitted with a cover of galvanized wire, the purpose of which is to keep out rodents which are so destructive to planted nuts. In these cages there are now a large number of hybrid nut trees growing, and they will be transplanted to permanent sites or to the garden for culture next spring.

(55) Japanese heart nut (Juglans cordiformis). The tree is supposed by some botanists to be a form of the Siebold walnut, but it has quite a different appearance. It has an open habit with large leaves and nuts which are suggestive of the conventional heart. The quality of the nut is very good, much like that of the Siebold, but the nut is larger and compressed. The tree is very hardy and is almost tropical in appearance. It has not been planted very largely in this county, but it undoubtedly will be eventually.

(56) Siberian walnut. The tree looks much like the Siebold walnut in general appearance, but with smaller leaflets, and the nut is very much like our butternut, but smaller and with much rougher shell.

(57) Two pecan trees that I bought from a nursery about twelve years ago. They have not borne as yet and being seedlings we cannot know if they will be of value. I shall probably graft them next year and not wait for them to bear their own nuts.

(58) Two large Siebold walnuts only twelve years of age, but growing in rich ground and sometimes making five feet of growth in a single year. They were well filled with nuts two weeks ago, but the red squirrels have cut down all of the nuts including numbers which I hybridized with English walnut pollen this spring. On one of the lower branches of one of the Siebold walnuts is a long thrifty graft of the Lutz black walnut that I put in this spring, simply because I happened to cut off the lower branches of the Siebold that were shading the garden, and I happened to have some of the black walnut scions with me at the time. It will not be allowed to remain on this tree.

(59) A cross between our Siebold walnut and our butternut, now about eight years old, but growing thriftily. It has not borne nuts as yet. I have a number of these trees and they appear to be good hybrids.

(60) A group of Kaghazi Persian walnuts. A valuable variety and one of the so-called English walnuts, a term that we use for convenience because the name has become established in this country by the market men, not by the botanists.

(61) A thrifty young Chinese seedling persimmon (Diospyros lotus).

(62) Little trees of one of the nut pines (Pinus edulis). They are at their best in the arid mountains of Arizona, and the species is very important as furnishing a food supply for the Indians. The little trees are hardy here in dry soil among the rocks, but do not grow rapidly. Mine have been in more than six years and are not more than six inches in height, but are very pretty.

(63) The Chinese Tamopan persimmon. The tree is very handsome, with large glossy leaves, but somewhat tender in Connecticut and requiring protected exposure. The fruit of the Tamopan is as large as a very large apple.

(64) Several trees five years of age, the result of English walnut pollen on Siebold walnut pistillate flowers. The trees are growing very thriftily, but they show the Siebold characteristic without much evidence of the English walnut parentage.

(65) A field of Pomeroy English walnuts, notable for their beautiful white bark. The trees have been in over eight years and set nuts for the first time this year. As seedling trees we cannot tell what they will do when in full bearing.

(66) Two species of nut bearing pines from which the marking labels have become lost, and I shall not be able to determine the species until they bear cones. One of them is very beautiful, with long leaves and pleasing bluish green foliage.

A VISIT TO THE ESTATE OF THE LATE LOWELL M. PALMER, NOTABLE FOR ITS COLLECTION OF TREES AND SHRUBS, DR. MORRIS CONDUCTING.

Here we see the Ginkgo trees, two of them bearing. The Ginkgo belongs by descent to the coniferous tree group. A very fine tree with nuts that are highly prized by the Asiatics, but somewhat too resinous for the American palate. Most of the Ginkgo trees are males, but one may graft any number of males with bearing female scions.

An Araucaria imbricata grew for twenty years on this place, and we have only just learned that it died last year. This pine is one of the most important of the nut pines and furnishes a large food supply in South America. The fact that one tree lived for twenty years in this latitude means a great deal.

A number of European hazel bushes are growing on the property and bearing heavily. A large heart nut tree, but bearing small nuts, is growing well. Several of the Himalayan nut pines (Pinus excelsa) beautify the property, and one of the trees, heavily laden with cones, is at least fifty years of age. Another one of the nut-bearing pines (Pinus paviflora, from Japan) is represented by several specimens on the Palmer property, and one little tree apparently less than ten years of age, is heavily loaded with cones. Incidentally we may examine here a trifoliate orange filled with fruit. It is growing in a well protected corner of the grounds. Mr. Webber sent some valuable trifoliate hybrids to Merribrooke. One variety lived through the winter, but made a crippled start in the spring. Some day we may have good trifoliate orange hybrids in Connecticut if the Buckley hickory, Stuart pecan, Arizona walnut and imbricated pine grow here.

A dinner was held at the Hotel Davenport on the evening of the 5th, at which about thirty-five members and guests were present. After dinner the public was admitted and the following papers were read, Mr. Collingwood being a guest of the Association:

Dr. Kellogg: I feel a great interest in the work of this Association and a great sympathy with it. I feel that you are all working for me and I am doing what I can to promote your interests also. That is, I am trying to create a market for your products.

ADVENT OF NUTS INTO THE NATION'S LIST OF STAPLE FOODS.

Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Michigan.

In these days when a condition of food shortage exists in the greater part of the civilized world, any question which concerns a nation's food supply is of public interest.

Food conservation is the great question of the hour. Visions of vanishing steaks and chops alarm the overfed and rising prices of all foodstuffs pinch the bills of fare of the poor.

It may easily be shown that most of all the hardships which the civilized world is suffering as regards food supply is due to lack of understanding and of foresight.

The fundamental error is the popular faith in the high protein ration. The physiologists are at least partly at fault. Liebig's dictum, which made protein the essential food factor in supporting work, has misled the whole civilized world for more than half a century. The dietaries of institutions, armies, whole nations have been based upon a conception which modern science has shown to be utterly false, and the result has been an economic loss which staggers belief, and a destruction of human life and efficiency which overshadows every other malign influence.

To properly appreciate the place of nuts in the national dietary we must have in mind a clear conception of the nature of food as revealed to us in the light of modern laboratory studies of human nutrition and metabolism.

Food is to an animal what soil is to a plant. It is the soil out of which we grew. What we eat today is walking around and talking tomorrow. The most marvelous of miracles is the transmutation of common foodstuffs into men and women, the transfiguration of bread, potatoes and beefsteak into human intelligence, grace, beauty and noble action. We read in holy writ how the wandering Israelites were abundantly fed in the Assyrian desert with manna from the skies and marvel at the Providence which saved a million souls from death, forgetting that every harvest is a repetition of the same miracle, that each morsel of food we eat is a gift of Heaven conveyed to us by a sunbeam. Food is simply sunshine captured by the chlorophyll of plants and served up to us in tiny bundles called molecules, which, when torn apart in our bodies by the processes of digestion and assimilation release the captured energy which warms us with heat brought from the sun and shines out in human thought and action.

It is less than a century since Liebig and Lehmann and their pupils began to unravel the mystery of food. In recent years no subject has received more assiduous attention from scientific men, and none has been made the object of more constant or more profound research than the questions of food and food supply. The feeding of animals and men is without question the most pressing and vital of all economic problems.

The labors of Voit and Pettenkofer, Rubner, Zuntz, Atwater, Benedict, Chittenden, Mendel, Lusk and Hindhede have demonstrated that there is the closest relation between food supply or food selection and human efficiency. In fact, it has been clearly shown that the quality of the food intake is just as directly and as closely related to the question of human efficiency as is the quality and quantity of gasoline to the efficiency of an automobile.

In fact it has been established as a fundamental principle in human physiology that food is fuel. Life is a combustion process.

The human body is a machine which may be likened to a locomotive—it is a self-controlling, self-supporting, self-repairing mechanism. As the locomotive rushes along the iron road, pulling after it a thousand-ton cargo of produce or manufactured wares or human freight sufficient to start a town or stock a political convention its enormous expenditure of energy is maintained by the burning of coal from the tender which is replenished at every stopping place. The snorting-monster at the head of the rushing procession gets hungry and has to have a lunch every few miles along the way. After a run of a hundred miles or so the engine leaves the train and goes into a roundhouse for repairs; an iron belt has dropped out or a brass nut has been shaken off. Every lost or damaged part of the metal leviathan is replaced, and then it is ready for another century run.

The human body is wonderfully like the locomotive. It pulls or carries loads, it expends energy, it consumes fuel and has to stop at meal stations to coal up; it has to go off duty periodically for repairs. The body needs just what the locomotive needs—fuel to furnish energy and material for repair of the machinery.

Food differs from fuel chiefly in the one particular, that in each little packet of food done up by Mother Nature there is placed along with the fuel for burning a tiny bit of material to be used for repair of the machine. In other words, food represents in its composition both the coal and the metal repair materials of the locomotive. The starch, sugar and fat of foods are the coal and the protein or albumin is the metal repair stuff. Here we see at once the reason why starch and sugar and fat are so abundant in our foodstuffs, while protein or albumin is in quantity a minor element.

But there are other differences between food and common fuel which are worthy of mention. The water and the salts are essential to meet the body's needs, especially the various mineral elements, lime, soda, potash and iron. All these we must have—lime for the bones and nerves, soda and potash to neutralize the harmful acid products of combustion processes, and iron for the blood.

All these are found in normal foodstuffs, but in greatly varying proportions, so that a pretty large variety of foods must be eaten to make sure that each of the different food principles required for perfect nutrition are supplied in ample quantity.

In recent years science has discovered another and most surprising property of food in which it transcends all other fuel substances as a diamond from the Transvaal outshines a lump of coal. Natural food contains vitamines. It has long been known that an exclusive rice diet sometimes causes beri-beri, a form of general neuritis, and that a diet of dry cereals and preserved food in time gives rise to scurvy, but the reason was a profound mystery. In very recent years it has been learned that the real cause of beri-beri and scurvy is the lack of vitamines which are associated with the bran of cereals and so are removed in the process of polishing rice and in the bolting of wheat and other grains.

Vitamines do not enter into the composition of the body as do other food principles, but they are somehow necessary to activate or render active the various subtle elements which are essential to good nutrition.

There are several kinds of vitamines. Some are associated with the bran of cereals, other with the juices of fruits. Some are easily destroyed by heat, while others survive a boiling temperature. The discovery of vitamines must stand as one of the most masterly achievements of modern science, even outshining in brilliancy the discovery of radium. It was only by the most persevering efforts and the application of all the refinements of modern chemical technic that the chemist, Funk, was able to capture and identify this most subtle but marvelously potent element of the food. This discovery has cleared up a long category of medical mysteries. We now know not only the cause of beri-beri and scurvy and the simple method of cure by supplying vitamine-containing foods, but within a very short time it has been shown that rickets and pellagra are likewise deficiency diseases, probably due to lack of vitamines, and in a recent discussion before the New York Academy of Medicine by Funk, Holt, Jacobi and others, it was maintained that vast multitudes of people are suffering from disorders of nutrition due to the same cause.

Osborne a few years ago conducted experiments which demonstrated that something more than pure food elements and salts is essential for growth and development. They found that rats fed on starch and fat lived only four to eight weeks. When protein was added they sometimes lived and grew and sometimes remained stunted or died. It was thus evident that proteins differ. Their observations proved very clearly that there are perfect and imperfect proteins. The protein of corn, zein, for example, was shown to be incapable of supporting life. With the addition of a chemical fraction, tryptophan, obtained from another protein, the rats lived, but did not grow. By adding another fractional protein, lysin, the rats were made to thrive.

A minute study of the subject by Osborne, Mendel and numerous other physiologic chemists have shown that a perfect protein is composed of more than a dozen different bodies called amino-acids, each of which must be present in the right proportion to enable the body to use the protein in body building. Each plant produces its one peculiar kind of protein. The protein of milk, caseine, is a perfect protein. Eggs and meat, of course, supply complete proteins, but among plants there are many imperfect proteins.

McCollum has demonstrated that grains, either singly or in combination will not maintain life and growth. The same is true of a mixture of grains with peas or navy beans. Another element is lacking which must be supplied to support life and growth.

With these facts before us we are prepared to inquire what place in the dietary are nuts prepared to fill? With few exceptions nuts contain little carbohydrate (starch or sugar). They are, however, rich in fat and protein. On account of their high fat content they are the most highly concentrated of all natural foods. A pound of nuts contains on an average more than 3,000 calories or food units, double the amount supplied by grains, four times as much as average meats and ten times as much as average fruits or vegetables.

For example, according to Jaffi's table, ten of our common nuts contain on an average 20.7 per cent. of protein, 53 per cent. of fat and 18 per cent. of carbohydrate, as shown in the following table: