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

ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING

WASHINGTON D. C.
OCTOBER 7 AND 8,
1920

CONTENTS

OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION

COMMITTEES

• Auditing—C. P. Close, C. A. Reed
• Executive—J. Russell Smith, W. C. Reed and the Officers
• Finance—T. P. Littlepage, Willard G. Bixby, W. C. Deming
• Hybrids—R. T. Morris, C. P. Close, W. G. Bixby, J. G. Rush
• Membership—James S. McGlennon, H. R. Weber, R. T. Olcott, W. O. Potter, W. G. Bixby, W. C. Deming.
• Nomenclature—C. A. Reed, R. T. Morris, J. F. Jones
• Press and Publication—R. T. Olcott, W. G. Bixby, W. C. Deming.
• Programme—W. C. Deming, J. Russell Smith, C. A. Reed, R. T. Morris, W. G. Bixby
• Promising Seedlings—C. A. Reed, J. F. Jones

STATE VICE-PRESIDENTS

MEMBERS OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS ASSOCIATION

Alabama
Robertson, H. M., 2026 1st Ave., Birmingham.
Arkansas
* Drake, Prof. N. F., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Dunn, D. K., Wynne.
California
California, University of, Berkeley
Cress, B. E., Tehachapi
Thorpe, Will J., 2198 Geary St., San Francisco
Tucker, T. C., 311 California St., San Francisco
Canada
Bell, Alex., Milliken, Ontario
Corsan, G. H., 17 Rusholme Park Crescent, Toronto
Sager, Dr. D. S., Brantford
China
Kinsan Arboretum, Chuking, Kiangsu Province, P. W. Wang, Sec.
Colorado
Bennett, L. E., Cory
Cudebec, C. L., Boulder, Box 233
Connecticut
Barrows, Paul M., Stamford, R. F. D. No. 30
Bartlett, Francis A., Stamford
Benedict, Samuel L., 98 So. Main St., So. Norwalk
Bradley, Smith T., New Haven, Grand Ave.
Cajori, F. A., 2 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven
Craig, Joseph A., 783 Washington Ave., West Haven
Deming, Dr. W. C., Wilton
Filley, W. O., State Forester, Drawer 1, New Haven
Glover, James L., Shelton, R. F. D. 7
Hilliard, H. J., Sound View
Hungerford, Newman, Torrington, R. F. D. 2, Box 76
Ives, Ernest M., Sterling Orchards, Meriden
Lewis, Henry Leroy, Stratford
McGlashan, Archibald, Kent
* Morris, Dr. Robert T., Cos Cob, Route 28, Box 95
Pomeroy, Eleazer, 120 Bloomfield Ave., Windsor
Sessions, Albert L., 25 Bellevue Ave., Bristol
Southworth, George E., Milford, Box 172
Staunton, Gray, 98 Park St., New Haven
White, Gerrard, North Granby
District of Columbia
Close, Prof. C. P., Pomologist, Department of Agriculture, Washington
Foster, B. G., 902 G Street, N. W. Washington
* Littlepage, T. P., Union Trust Building, Washington
Reed, C. A., Nut Culturist, Department of Agriculture, Washington
Taylor, Dr. Lewis H., The Cecil, Washington
+ Van Fleet, Walter, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington
England
Spence, Howard, Eskdale, Knutsford, Cheshire
Georgia
Bullard, William P., Albany
Patterson, J. M., Putney
Perry, A. S., Cuthbert
Steele, R. C., Lakemont, Rabun Co.
Van Duzee, C. A., Judson Orchard Farm, Cairo
Wight, J. B., Cairo
Illinois
Buckman, Benj., Farmingdale
Casper, O. H., Anna
Heide, John F. H., 3917 Grand Blvd., Chicago
Librarian, University of Illinois, Urbana
Poll, Carl J., 1009 Maple St., Danville
Potter, Hon. W. O., Marion
Riehl, E. A., Godfrey, Route 2
Sundstrand, Mrs. G. D., 916 Garfield Ave., Rockford
Uran, B. F., Mattoon
Wells, Oscar, Farina
Indiana
Crain, Donald J., 1313 North St., Logansport
Jackson, Francis M., 122 N. Main St., South Bend
Reed, W. C., Vincennes
Redmon, Felix, Rockport, R. R. No. 2, Box 32
Simpson, H. D., Vincennes
Staderman, A. L., 120 S. Seventh St., Terre Haute
Wilkinson, J. F., Rockport
Iowa
Bricker, C. W., Ladora
Finnell, J. F. C., Hamburg
Skromme, L. J., (Skromme Seed Company), Roland
Snyder, D. C., Center Point (Linn Co. Nurseries)
Kansas
Bishop, S. L., Conway Springs
Sharpe, James, Council Grove, (Morris Co. Nurseries)
Kentucky
Baker, Sam C., Beaver Dam, R. D. 2
Livengood, Frank M., Berea
Maine
Leavitt, Alice D., 79 High St., Bridgton
Maryland
Hoopes, Wilmer P., Forest Hill
Keenan, Dr. John F., Brentwood
Littlepage, Miss Louise, Bowie
O'Connor, P. J., Bowie
Massachusetts
* Bowditch, James H., 903 Tremont Building, Boston
Cleaver, C. Leroy, 496 Commonwealth Ave., Boston
Poynter, Horace M., "The Farrar House," Andover
Scudder, Dr. Charles L., 209 Beacon St., Boston
Michigan
Beck, J. P., 25 James, Saginaw
Cross, John L., 104 Division St., Bangor
Graves, Henry B., 2134 Dime Bank Bldg., Detroit
Henshall, H., 1276 Brush St., Detroit
House, George W., Ford Building, Detroit
Kellogg, Dr. J. H., 202 Manchester St., Battle Creek
Linton, W. S., President Board of Trade, Saginaw
McKale, H. B., Lansing, Route 6
Penny, Senator Harvey A., 425 So. Jefferson Ave., Saginaw
Schram, Mrs. O. E., Galesburg, Box 662
Smith, Edward J., 86 So. Union St., Battle Creek
Missouri
Hazen, Josiah J., (Neosho Nurseries Co.) Neosho
Mosnat, H. R., 3883 East 62 St., Kansas City
Spellen, Howard P., 4505a W. Papin St., St. Louis
Stark, P. C., Louisiana
Ward, Miss Daisy, 2019 Allen Ave., St. Louis
Nebraska
Caha, Wm., Wahoo
New Hampshire
Stevens, Henry B., N. H. College of Agriculture, Durham
Nevada
Swingle, C. G., Hazen
New Jersey
Brown, Jacob B., Elmer, Salem Co.
* Jaques, Lee W., 74 Waverly St., Jersey City Heights
Landmann, Miss M. V., Cranbury, R. D. 2
Marshall, S. L., Vineland
Marston, Edwin S., Florham Park, Box 72
Phillips, Irving S., 501 Madison St., West New York, N. J.
Price, John R., 36 Ridgedale Ave., Madison
Ridgeway, C. S., Floralia, Lumberton
Westcoat, Wilmer, 230 Knight Ave., Collingswood
New York
Abbott, Frederick B., 1211 Tabor Court, Brooklyn
Adams, Sidney I., 418 Powers Bldg., Rochester
Andrews, W. S., Newburgh, R. D. No. 2
Ashworth, Fred L., Heuvelton
Atwater, C. G., The Barrett Co., 17 Battery Place, New York City
Babcock, H. J., Lockport
Bixby, Willard G., 32 Grand Ave., Baldwin, Nassau Co.
Brown, Ronald K., 320 Broadway, New York City
Buist, Dr. George J., 3 Hancock St., Brooklyn
Crane, Alfred J., Monroe, Box 342
Diprose, Alfred H., 468 Clinton Ave., South, Rochester
Ellwanger, Mrs. W. D., 510 East Ave., Rochester
Gillett, Dr. Henry W., 140 W. 57 St., New York City
Goeltz, Mrs. M. H., 2524 Creston Ave., New York City
Hall, L. W. Jr. (L. W. Hall Company), 509 Cutler Bldg., Rochester
Harper, G. W., Jr., 115 Broadway, New York City
Hicks, Henry, Westbury, Long Island
Hodgson, Casper W., World Book Co., Yonkers
Hoffmann, Arthur S., 36 Church St., White Plains
* Huntington, A. M., 15 West 81st St., New York City
Kains, M. G., Pomona
McGlennon, James S., 528 Cutler Building, Rochester
Meyers, Charles, 316 Adelphi St., Brooklyn
Olcott, Ralph T., Editor American Nut Journal, Ellwanger and Barry Building, Rochester
Pomeroy, A. C., Lockport
Solley, Dr. John B., 968 Lexington Ave., New York City
Stephen, John W., New York State College of Forestry, Syracuse
Tallinger, J. F., Barnard
Teele, A. W., 120 Broadway, New York City
Vollertsen, Conrad, 375 Gregory St., Rochester
Whitney, Arthur C., 9 Manila St., Rochester
Whitney, Leon F., 65 Barclay St., New York City
Wile, M. E., 955 Harvard St., Rochester
Williams, Dr. Charles Mallory, 48 E. 49th St., New York City
* Wissman, Mrs. F. deR., Westchester, New York City
North Carolina
Barrett, Dr. Harvey P., 211 Vail Ave., Charlotte
Hutchings, Miss Lida G., Pine Bluff
Matthews, C. W., North Carolina Dept. of Agriculture, Raleigh
Van Lindley, J., J. Van Lindley Nursery Co., Pomona
Ohio
Burton, J. Howard, Casstown
Dayton, J. H., Storrs & Harrison Co., Painesville
Fickes, W. R., Wooster
Jackson, A. V., 3275 Linwood Road, Cincinnati
Ketchum, C. S., Middlefield
Ramsey, John, 1803 Freeman Ave., Cincinnati
Truman, G. G., Perrysville, Box 167
Weber, Harry R., 123 East 6th St., Cincinnati
Yunck, E. G., 706 Central Ave., Sandusky
Oklahoma
Beitmen, Dr. C. E., Skedee
Oregon
Marvin, Cornelia (Librarian), Oregon State Library, Salem
Pearcy, Knight, Salem, R. F. D. 3, Box 187
Pennsylvania
Allaman, R. P., Bedford, R. R. No. 4
Bolton, Chas. G., Zieglerville, Pa.
Clark, D. F., 147 N. 13 St., Harrisburg
Druckemiller, W. H., Sunbury
Fagan, Prof. F. N., Department of Horticulture, State College
Fritz, Ammon P., 35 E. Franklin St., Ephrata
Heffner H., Highland Chestnut Grove, Leeper
Hess, Elam C., Manheim
Hile, Anthony, Curwensville National Bank, Curwensville
Irwin, Ernest C., 66 St. Nicholas Blvd., Pittsburg
Jenkins, Charles Francis, Farm Journal, Philadelphia
* Jones, J. F., Lancaster, Box 527
Kaufman, M. M., Clarion
Leas, F. C., Merion Station
Murphy, P. J., Vice President L. & W. R. R. Co., Scranton
O'Neill, William C., 328 Walnut St., Philadelphia
Patterson, J. E., 77 N. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre
* Rick, John, 438 Pennsylvania Square, Reading
Rife, Jacob A., Camp Hill
Rose, William J., 413 Market St., Harrisburg, "Personal"
Rush, J. G., West Willow
Russell, Dr. Andrew L., 729 Wabash Bldg., Pittsburgh
Smedley, Samuel L., Newtown Square, R. F. D. 1
Smith, Dr. J. Russell, Swarthmore
* Sober, Col. C. K., Lewisburg
Taylor, Lowndes, West Chester, Box 3, Route 1
Walther, R. G., Willow Grove, Doylestown, Pike
Weaver, William S., McCungie
Wilhelm, Dr. Edward A., Clarion
* Wister, John C., Wister St. & Clarkson Ave., Germantown
South Carolina
Shanklin, Prof. A. G., Clemson College
Texas
Burkett, J. H., Nut Specialist, State Department of Agriculture, Clyde
Trumbull, R. S., Agricultural Agent, El Paso & S. W. System Morenci Southern R. R. Co., El Paso
Vermont
Holbrook, F. C., Brattleboro
Virginia
Parish, John S., University
Washington
Baines, William, Okanogan
West Virginia
Brooks, Fred E., French Creek
Cannaday, Dr. John Egerton, Charleston, Box 693
Hartzell, B. F., Shepherdstown
Mish, A. F., Inwood
Wisconsin
Lang, Robert B., Racine, Box 103
Patchen, Dr. G. W., Manitowoc
* Life member.
+ Honorary 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 nutbearing 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, a secretary and a treasurer, who shall be elected by ballot at the annual meeting; and an executive committee of six persons, of which the president, the two last retiring presidents, the vice-president, the secretary and the 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 two of the four 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 either with the first day of the calendar quarter following the date of joining the Association, or with the first day of the calendar quarter preceding that date as may be arranged between the new member and the Treasurer.

Article IV

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

PROCEEDINGS AT THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS ASSOCIATION

Washington D. C. October 7 and 8 1920

The Association was called to order at 10 a. m. Thursday October 7th by the President, Hon. William S. Linton, of Saginaw, Michigan, in the auditorium of the New National Museum.

The President: It has been something of an effort for me to reach here at ten o'clock in order to meet the obligations of the program as it was only a few days ago that I was in lower California very near the Pacific Ocean in old Mexico. As I turned about to come back toward the East the thought came into my mind that I must be in Washington D. C. at the annual meeting of the Northern Nut Growers Association at ten o'clock on Thursday morning October 7. Traveling over three thousand miles I was fortunate enough to get here just two minutes before the ten o'clock hour so the connections you will see were close. The paper that your president is to present comes at a later place on the program so we will proceed with the business session at once. The first thing on the program is the report of the Secretary and Treasurer.

Verified by
C. P. CLOSE,
C. A. REED,
Auditing Committee.

The above are records of receipts and expenditures for 10 months and are about 82% of those for the period covered by the previous report, 2 years 3 months. There has been an earnest attempt to carry on the work of the Secretary-Treasurer in a more aggressive manner than before. A bulletin aiming to give up to date information on nut growing, Bulletin No. 5, has been issued and has gone well. While it has been sold, no attempt has been made to make money on it but simply to make it pay its way and apparently it is going to do that and assist in spreading information about the work of the Association.

Sixty-six new members have joined the Association since the date of the last meeting, making 476 since organization, of which we have 199, and of whom 277 have dropped out. A few former members have joined since the date of the last report which apparently accounts for the strange fact that increase in membership (128 to 199) is greater than the number of new members.

Following out the plan outlined at the Battle Creek Convention, the work of the Secretary-Treasurer has begun to be divided, the undersigned taking the duties of Treasurer and the Nut Contests and Dr. Deming taking the Conventions and the work of the Secretary proper until the expected action of the present convention shall formally divide the work of the Secretary-Treasurer and create the offices of Secretary and Treasurer.

Respectfully submitted,

WILLARD G. BIXBY.
Secretary-Treasurer.

The President: This is a very good report, complete in every detail, and unless other action is desired, it will be received and recorded in the minutes of the meeting.

Mr. Reed, you are chairman of the committee that had in charge the tree-planting bill in order that it might be made uniform throughout the country. Have you a report to make?

Mr. Reed: Mr. President, the committee members have been over that individually but have not had an opportunity to discuss it together. If a full report can be had a little later I think that would be more satisfactory. So far as I have been able to go into it the law seems to about cover the ground. I could not make any suggestions as to how it could be improved. I happen to know that the author of the bill, who is our president, has been called upon by several other states to discuss such a law for those states, and I think he is in the best position to tell us if there are any holes in it. If we can have the consent of the house we will defer a full report until we can discuss the matter with our president and with our committee as a whole.

The President: We will take that course unless there are objections.

The communications received by the acting secretary will be filed and printed in the proceedings. If there are no vice-presidents present who are prepared to make reports that order will be passed. At this time should come the appointment of committees but I think it would be well to defer that business until we can consult as to the membership of the committees. The next in order will be some remarks by Mr. Littlepage about the proposed afternoon excursion.

The Acting Secretary: The speakers are Dr. Van Fleet, Mr. Littlepage and Professor Close. I have here the resume of Dr. Van Fleet and I think that it would be better perhaps to read the report of Dr. Van Fleet at once as it may have some bearing on the remarks of Mr. Littlepage and Professor Close.

CHESTNUT WORK AT BELL EXPERIMENT PLOT

Dr. Walter Van Fleet, Glendale, Maryland

Our breeding work with chestnuts began as far back as 1894 when pistillate blooms of the Paragon variety, then a novelty just coming into use, were dusted with pollen from a native sweet chestnut bearing good-sized nuts. The Paragon stigma were protected from the influence of other pollen by bagging and gave a good set of fruits. The idea was to improve the quality of the Paragon nuts even at the expense of size. The resulting seedlings were grown at Little Silver, New Jersey, and rapidly ran up into good-sized trees, coming into bearing twelve years later. In fruit and tree characters they proved a complete blend of the parent species, the nuts being double the size of the wild parent and of sweet, rich quality. The trees were very shapely and bid fair to become extremely productive but a year or two later were all attacked by the dreaded blight or bark disease, then spreading from its original starting point in Long Island. The work of destruction was very rapid and by the third year all were hopelessly crippled, but a few individuals continued to send up suckers as late as 1916.

The success of this pollination experiment encouraged the writer to attempt breeding the dwarf early-bearing chinquapin with the large-fruited foreign varieties in the hope of securing hybrids with nuts of fair size and good quality that might come quickly into bearing. As the chinquapin does not naturally grow in Northern New Jersey, and plants were rarely offered by nurserymen, recourse was had to growing them from seed and a quantity of newly collected nuts were furnished by a friend in Washington in 1899. It required three years time to bring the seedlings into fruit and it was not until 1903 that a start was actually made in the work of hybridization. A selection was made of a compact dwarf bush that bore very sweet nuts of a good size for the species and gave promise, which was later fulfilled, of becoming very prolific. The male, or staminate tassels were carefully removed each day before maturity and, to ward off undesired foreign pollen, a cloth tent was used to cover the bush in addition to bagging many of the flowering branches. Pollen for crossing was secured from Paragon and Numbo, of the European species, and of several named varieties of Japan chestnut including Parry's Giant, Killen and Hale, and in addition a few blooms were intentionally fertilized with pollen from local sweet chestnut trees. Nearly one hundred hybrid seedlings resulted from the work in two succeeding seasons, some of which came into bearing in 1908, just as the Endothia blight began to invade New Jersey. The hybrids between the chinquapins and native and European chestnuts were quickly infected, but those with Japan varieties appeared far more resistant. All work with the susceptible native and Europeans ceased, but crosses with Japans and the Chinese chestnut, Castanea Molissima, have been continued until now there are over eight hundred in existence. In late years we have used the Southern creeping chinquapin, C. alnifolia, as a seed parent to some extent, as it appears more resistant than the common species, C. pumila, though it cannot be considered immune. The southern chinquapin is hardy in the North, bears good-sized, sweet nuts for its type, but is very late in ripening.

The Rush chinquapin, and other large-fruited, tall growing varieties have also been used to some extent. The resulting hybrids make handsome trees of rapid growth and bear profuse crops of very attractive nuts, but are greatly injured by blight. As experience accumulated it was found that the extreme caution used in the earlier trials to keep out foreign pollen were scarcely needed and that merely covering the pistillate blooms as soon as they could be distinguished with cotton batting is all that is necessary, and also that hybrids may be produced with considerable certainty in open pollination if the tree or branch is kept entirely free from staminate tassels and the selected pollen is promptly applied as soon as the stigmas become receptive.

Quite a number of chance or self-pollinated seedlings from choice hybrids have been raised in the hope that their good qualities might be perpetuated and the trouble and expense of grafting largely obviated but, as with most other hybrids between distinct species, the seedlings lacked sufficient uniformity to be of especial value. A few individuals turned out superior to the parent but on the whole degeneracy, from the nut-producers standpoint, appears among seedlings of hybrid chestnuts.

In 1909 the unfruited chinquapin hybrids, 68 in number, were transferred to Arlington Farm, Virginia, and two years later Bell Experiment Plot was established near Glendale, Maryland, largely for the purpose of developing blight-resistant varieties of chestnuts as far as this can be done by breeding and testing of wild forms. There are now over 2000 hybrids and seedlings of species at Bell ranging from one to ten years of age. Of the original trees planted at Arlington about 20 remain. They have formed handsome trees twenty feet high with tops almost as wide in diameter and have borne many profuse crops of nuts mostly of good quality and from three to six times as large and heavy as those of the parent chinquapin. All have been attacked by blight, the most promising one only this spring, after thirteen years of resistance to this virulent disease. All the hybrids carrying blood of native or European chestnuts were quickly killed, but those with the Japanese species as a pollen parent are still growing vigorously and bearing well, though considerably disfigured by blight.

Of the various species used the native sweet chestnut, Castanea Americana, and the European, C. vesca, appear entirely useless in breeding for disease resistance, as the hybrids are destroyed by the blight fungus as soon as, or even before, they reach bearing age. The tall, or tree, forms of native chinquapin, sometimes grouped under the botanical name of Castanea arborea but which appear to be only natural hybrids between the sweet chestnut and the bush chinquapin, may also be regarded as useless for the purpose. The hybrid progeny show slight powers of recuperation but, in our plantings, do not sufficiently recover to make useful trees. The Rush chinquapin sometimes resists infection under natural conditions for several years but quickly succumbs when attacked, but its hybrid seedlings develop practically no resistance. The common bush or dwarf chinquapin, Castanea pumila, widely distributed over the Atlantic States, is not as readily infected by blight as the chestnut, many individuals under cultivation and in the wild resisting attack for an indefinite time, while the creeping species of Florida and South Georgia, C. alnifolia, appear practically immune in nature but succumb to artificial inoculation with the blight virus The smooth bark and shrubby forms of these dwarf chinquapins probably account to a very great extent for the limited damage caused by blight under natural conditions.

Next in degree of resistance comes the wooly-twigged Chinese chestnut, C. molissima. There are established at Bell Experiment Plot over nine hundred Molissima trees grown from nuts collected near Tien-Tsin, China, in 1911. These trees in their eighth year of growth have borne excellent nuts, rather larger than those of our native species, in some quantity for three successive years though, owing to extensive locust injury last season, there is practically no crop this year. The trees average twelve or more feet high and are thrifty growers when not too greatly afflicted by blight. No summary of disease injury has been taken, but probably over 80 per cent of the trees show infection many of which are making attempts to heal which are often very successful. This species is native to Eastern China and has long been accustomed to the Endothia fungus, developing in the course of time a very considerable degree of resistance to it. From present appearances the Chinese chestnut may be grown in orchard form with no greater loss from disease than the pear from its particular form of blight. It hybridizes well with the Japan chestnut and both of the dwarf chinquapins, but this progeny is not yet sufficiently developed to warrant judgment.

Castanea crenata, the familiar Japan chestnut, appears everywhere to show greater blight resistance than any other species that has been tried out and is therefore the most hopeful parent to be used for developing a useful race of disease-resistant hybrids and cross-breeds. It has the further merit of bearing very profuse crops of large nuts at an early age, but they are often lacking in quality, being usually harsh to the taste in the raw state though palatable when cooked. A few varieties bear well-flavored nuts, but these appear to be hybrids with our native species and are notably less resistant to blight. Pure Japan varieties grown from imported nuts are rarely injured by blight, and by many are regarded as immune, but those grown from nuts produced in situations exposed to the effects of native pollen are occasionally attacked and even killed outright by the Endothia fungus. It has considerable power to transmit its resisting qualities to its hybrids with the chinquapins, and a few individuals among the latter appear to retain resistance to such a degree that we may yet find among them some of the best nut-producing chestnut varieties of the future.

From the purely horticultural standpoint these hybrids between chinquapins and chestnut species must be considered as most striking successes. If this terribly destructive disease, probably the most virulent that afflicts any tree in the temperate climate, could be controlled there would be little need to look further for varieties suited for commercial and home culture, some of which can be as readily grown as peach trees and come into bearing as young. As the situation stands we must search further for individuals that combine good cropping capacity with practical disease-resistance.

At this writing the most promising outlook appears among selected seedlings of pure Crenata blood, or hybrids of this species that have again been pollinated with resistant Japan varieties. There are at Bell many seedlings of both these types of great attractiveness and promise.

Five successive generations of selected Crenata seedlings have been grown since 1904, quite a number producing their first nuts the year succeeding germination. This unusual precocity is no indication of merit, as it tends to stunt the trees. The most promising individuals seldom bear until three or four years old by which time the trees have attained fair size. No high quality has yet been attained among the nuts of the pure strains, but it is quite evident where there is a dash of chinquapin blood. The nuts are, however, large, attractive and excellent for cooking or roasting, and moreover, ripen uniformly in September and early October, practically without the aid of frost. As opportunities for natural infection lessen from the dying out of our stands of native chestnut the Oriental chestnuts and their hybrids will be more extensively planted and may experience little difficulty in combating disease. Owing to the readiness with which seedlings can be grown abundant new varieties will arise in time, even though they do not now exist, that will meet all reasonable requirements of the planter and it is to be anticipated that the production of edible chestnuts will at no distant day be placed on a stable basis.

Aside from its usefulness as a nut tree the value of our stand of native chestnuts, though already half destroyed, can scarcely be estimated. Every one knows the ease with which a healthy chestnut woodland reproduces itself by sprouts and the extreme value of its timber for posts, telegraph and telephone poles, for furniture and for tanning extracts, now made from both bark and wood. We scarcely have a forest tree as useful, but if some natural handicap, not yet in sight, does not stay the spread of the blight fungus, our much valued chestnuts appear to be doomed. A few small colonies of diseased, but living sweet chestnut trees, numbering scarcely fifty, have been located in New York City parks and neighboring localities in Long Island, carrying infection at least eighteen years old, where the accompanying stands have completely vanished. This affords the single ray of hope amid the otherwise complete destruction marking the spread of blight. In the hope that the marked resistance shown by these scarred veterans can be transmitted seedlings have been raised and scions established at Bell from the most promising individuals, and on this slender chance for perpetuating this prized species in its native habitat we must, for the present, rest content.

Recently there has been brought to light in the interior of China a chestnut species that may restore our timber production of this most desirable wood if it should prove immune to disease. Unlike other Old World chestnuts, which form relatively small trees, this species, known as Castanea Vilmoriniana, grows eighty to one hundred feet high with a straight, symmetrical trunk well adapted for all timber uses. The nuts, according to the scant herbarium material that has reached this country, are of little consequence, except for propagation as they are only slightly larger than those of our wild chinquapins. This species is now established at the Arnold Arboretum near Boston, Massachusetts, and scions worked on C. Molissima stocks are now vigorously growing at Bell Experiment Plot, making fine upright shoots. The reaction of C. Vilmoriniana to blight has not been tested owing to the scarcity of material in this country, but it is fervently to be hoped that the species will resist the disease. No infections have occurred in several years exposure either at Boston or at Bell. Should the much desired resistance be established rapid propagation of the species by seed and scions, and an extended test for forestry purposes, would be in order.

The breeding experiments at Bell must be regarded as about the only constructive attempt in existence to replace a most highly prized nut and timber that is being swept from the face of the earth. Unless unforseen natural conditions should stay the ravages of blight our chestnut stands will vanish, most likely within the view of the present generation. Although our progress in finding and developing blight-resistants is not as striking as might be hoped something has been accomplished, and the idea of salvaging useful nut and timber chestnuts from available material and developing better ones than now exist should not be abandoned.

The President: Unless other action is desired this interesting paper will be received and recorded in the proceedings.

Mr. T. P. Littlepage: Mr. President, Members of the Association. I will attempt in a few words to give you some suggestions about your afternoon rambles. There will be a special car assigned exclusively to the nut growers on the tracks at 14th St. and New York Avenue at 12:45, which will take you to Bell Station where you will see Dr. Van Fleet's roses and chestnut orchard. A short walk from there is the old place of Judge Gabriel Duvall, a former Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, member of Congress and a great friend of Thomas Jefferson. The unpublished manuscripts of Jefferson show that he took to Judge Duvall a bundle of "paccan" trees, as he called them. Jefferson was one of our great horticulturists and gave the first complete botanical classification of the pecan. Those three big trees that Jefferson gave Judge Duvall are growing out there today and from them are scores of other small trees. I was very much surprised when I read these notes of Jefferson and in looking through Washington's dairy about the same time I read where he said that Thomas Jefferson gave him a bundle of "paccan" trees. Now those of you who are to visit Mount Vernon on this trip look and you will find that three of the most beautiful trees there are pecan trees. Two of them this year have nuts on them one with a rather full crop and one with a light crop. They are undoubtedly the western or northern pecan. They show that in the character of the nuts and bark. When Jefferson was over in Paris he wrote to his friend Hopkins to send him a box of pecans and told him to send them in sand. Those of you who are going to Paris next summer look around and you may find some of Thomas Jefferson's pecan trees. It was perfectly apparent that he wanted those nuts for planting.

After visiting at Bell Station we will take the car up to my place where there really is not much to see. I have thirty acres there of northern pecan trees, twelve acres two years old and they run all the way up to six years of age. Most of the six-year old trees this year set pecans which dropped off about the middle of the summer. They were all full of catkins. One Busseron tree had fifty pecans on it and a number of Major and Butterick trees had pecans but I do not believe they stuck. I had a Stuart which had a sprinkling of pecans on it and they also fell off. I can show you how not to grow trees. Some of them had no care whatever and some had pretty fair care. You can see dead chestnut trees up there showing that the blight is as bad as Dr. Van Fleet says. We find where they stand in the woods for ten years surrounded by trees with the blight and do not blight and the next year die. So the fact that a tree stands in a nursery row and does not blight does not indicate anything. The only hope we have is the work Dr. Van Fleet is doing.

The President: Upon the same subject we will be glad to hear from Professor Close.

Professor Close: I will just take a few minutes in telling some of the things I have been trying to do at home. My work is necessarily on a very small scale. I am away from home so much of the time that some things I start I cannot follow through properly. In grafting, for instance, I get the grafting done as I can do it from time to time in the spring and then I have to leave on a Government trip and am not at home to take care of the growing grafts as I would like to be. While my extension work for the Government is primarily connected with fruit I look into nut work as much as possible. Dr. Van Fleet has given me a number of hybrid chinkapins and this year three of them have fruited for the first time, one being of fairly good size. I have a couple of Japan walnut trees and the surprising thing is that although they were planted in 1910 they are fruiting this year for the first time. Usually those trees begin bearing very early. They have grown rapidly, are probably twenty feet high and have a breadth of equal distance but have been disappointing in that they have been so late in fruiting.

Mr. Littlepage. Do they winter-kill any?

Professor Close: No, they have not winter-killed at all. One was supposed to be a heart nut but both are Sieboldianas. I think the most satisfactory and interesting thing I have is one of these large filberts or hazel nuts. It is a pretty good size for an eastern-grown nut. This is a seedling from New Jersey. I received the scions four years ago and was successful in having three or four of them live and last year they produced for the first time, three years from the graft. They are well filled and of pretty good quality. I have them grafted on some bushes of European type secured from a nursery about 1910, and which until grafted did not fruit at all. After the grafts began blooming last year these bushes have been producing nuts of small size. While the nuts are small they are right interesting.

In connection with the blight resistant chestnuts I will say that last Friday I visited Mr. John Killen of Felton, Delaware. Some of you know that Mr. Killen has been working with nuts for a good many years and has many very interesting things there. He finds that the blight has taken everything except his Japanese seedlings and here (showing specimens) are specimens of two of the Japanese seedlings. This you see is a very large nut. I presume the tree must be twenty years old or more. It is productive and he says it is commercially successful, which means that it blights a little but not very seriously. He has another seedling, a smaller one, that is up to the present time absolutely blight proof. He has planted twenty-five or thirty pounds of these nuts for growing trees for sale and he believes that the seedling from this parent tree will be absolutely free from blight. You will be interested to know that up to the time I was there last Friday he had shipped seven hundred pounds of chestnuts and was receiving twenty-five cents a pound wholesale.

Mr. Littlepage: What is the variety?

Professor Close: They are all seedlings. In fact all of his varieties are dead. He has nothing but seedlings.

Mr. Littlepage: Has that been called to Dr. Van Fleet's attention?

Professor Close: Not that I know of. I doubt if Dr. Van Fleet has seen this blight proof one. I will be glad to tell him about them when I have an opportunity. Mr. Killen has one Japan walnut tree that is interesting. It must be 25 or 30 years old. I do not know where he got it. One limb we measured extends out 36 feet. The limbs on the other side of the tree are not quite so long but the tree is nearly 70 feet in diameter. Two years ago he sold the crop for $54.00, and he thinks he will get more this year. He has contracted the crop to a nurseryman. Mr. Killen has quite a number of seedling Persian walnuts and some of them, perhaps all, blight more or less. He is very much exercised over the blight. He worries more over this than he does over the chestnut blight.

Mr. Littlepage: Does the blight attack the nuts or the twigs?

Professor Close: Both but mostly it attacks the nuts. At Beltsville 4 miles north of College Park there is one of the best seedling walnuts I have run across. It fruits every year and sometimes a part of the crop is injured by blight.

Mr. Pomeroy: The husks turn black?

Professor Close: Yes.

Mr. Pomeroy: That is not blight; that is a fly injury

Professor Close: Mr. Killen thinks that this year he partially controlled walnut blight with Bordeaux spray. One particular tree stands near where the spray tank was filled and one side of it was sprayed every time the spray rig passed it. The nuts from the sprayed side were really better than those from the other side.

Just below Dover, Delaware, at Woodside, I was at Mr. Sam Derby's place last Saturday and found something very valuable in the line of Persian walnuts, I think one of the best I have seen at all in the East. One particular tree was purchased for a Franquette but it is not. It probably is a Mayette seedling. Some of the men who tested the samples think this was one of the most desirable they had seen in the East. Mr. Derby bought about a dozen trees eight or nine years ago from some nurseryman. The trees are not alike in shape and size of nuts. They evidently are from the same bunch of seedlings but were sold for Franquette and Mayette. They are probably all Mayette seedlings.

Now, coming back to College Park, four years ago Mr. Littlepage was good enough to give me some pecan scions which I grafted into a seedling tree in a neighbor's chicken yard. The grafts practically all lived and last year, three years from the graft, about a dozen Major nuts were produced. These are probably the first Major pecans produced in Maryland. This year the Busseron and Major grafts bloomed but we had so many late frosts that the blossoms were killed and now there are only two Major nuts on the tree. My own trees are not old enough to bloom except one Mantura which bloomed this year but did not set fruit. I presume it was largely due to the late frosts.

In the fall of 1910 Professor Lake gave me some buds of Persian walnut and I put three buds into a young black walnut tree. During the following February we had a drop in temperature to 25 below zero, something almost unknown in this section of the country, but two of the buds lived through it. After growth started in the spring I cut one out and the other grew into a tree which produced three nuts in 1915. My area for nut trees is small so I am planting pecans, black and Persian walnuts, and hickory twenty feet apart with the idea of keeping them pruned. I have ten varieties of pecans and several of walnuts. Between these I have chinkapins and hazelnuts. There are eight or ten varieties of hazels and about sixty seedlings for grafting later on.

Mr. Littlepage: Did the young pecan trees bloom.

Professor Close: Only the Mantura and it must be about ten years old.

Mr. Littlepage: What kind of bloom?

Professor Close: Both kinds.

Dr. Morris: Which hazels are these?

Professor Close: They were undoubtedly European.

Dr. Morris: I think that is a very important point. Some time ago I said that our wild hazel drove the cows out of the pasture. It is a worthless weed with us in Connecticut and it is an important thing for us to transform our hazel pasture lands that are full of thickets of this weed over into good bearing propositions. I grafted a lot of hazelnut bushes with European scions. There are Chinese hazelnut trees that grow to be more than a hundred feet in height and six feet in trunk diameter. The Jacquemont goes to one hundred feet, and the Colurna frequently grows to fifty feet. I believe it is going to be a very important matter to top work these large kinds of hazel trees which do not send runners out from the root and which are not inclined to send large suckers up from the stock. So the kind of stock upon which hazels are to be grafted is a very important matter for nurserymen. But we can also use the worthless pasture bushes profitably.

The President: In order that we may keep the business of our program up to the minute we should complete the naming of the Nominating Committee. In order to quickly bring it about and in order that all may have a voice in the matter I would suggest that five be nominated from the floor for the positions, that the nominations then close and that the Secretary cast the ballot for the members of the nominating committee.

The names suggested were: Mr. Olcott, Mr. Littlepage, Dr. Morris, Mr. Reed and Professor Close.

The nominations closed and the Secretary cast the ballot for the above named persons.

The President: We still have a few minutes and might take up the proposed changes in the constitution that were suggested at the Battle Creek meeting almost one year ago. I will request Mr. Bixby to state to you what the proposed changes are.

The Secretary: At the meeting at Battle Creek last November notice was given for proposed changes in the constitution, as follows.

At this meeting it was voted that Article IV, OFFICERS, be presented to the members at the next meeting for the purpose of voting on a change to read:

There shall be a President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer and a Secretary, who shall be elected at the annual meeting; an Executive Committee of six persons of which the President, the last two retiring Presidents, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary 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 VII. QUORUM, to be changed to read:

Ten members shall constitute a quorum but must include two of the four elected officers.

By Laws:

Article III. MEMBERSHIP—All annual memberships shall begin either with the first day of the calendar quarter following the date of joining the Association, or with the first day of the calendar quarter preceding that date as may be arranged between the new member and the Treasurer.

The Secretary: I make a motion that the changes in the constitution as read be acted upon now.

Professor Close: I second the motion.

Mr. Foster: May I offer a suggestion in connection with the proposed change. It is relatively an immaterial one and I presume will be included. As a member here from the District of Columbia I think the District of Columbia should be included with the states.

The Secretary: I think that has been done. Grouped among the states appears the District of Columbia.

The Acting Secretary: That is, you would have the words "District of Columbia" inserted in connection with state, dependency or country?

The Secretary: I accept that.

The change in the constitution, as recommended, was carried.

Mr. Littlepage: As we have another minute or two there is one matter that we might dispose of. There was a committee appointed once upon a time on incorporation. It was thought by some of the members that if this association were incorporated, making it thereby a perpetual, tangible organization, it might be to its advantage. There might be some man who would be good enough to bequeath some funds to the Association for investigational work. As we are just a voluntary organization without any particular responsibility, it was thought by some that an incorporation would be desirable. I was appointed as a member of the corporative committee. The committee consisted of Mr. Webber of Ohio, and I do not recall the other member but Mr. Webber and I had several conferences. It seems to me that perhaps the best and most feasible way would be to incorporate under the laws of the District of Columbia. The code of the District of Columbia provides for incorporations of this kind for educational, scientific and benevolent purposes at a very nominal expense. For commercial corporations they must, of course, have a capital stock and ten per cent of it must be paid in in cash, but there is no such requirement under the code of the District of Columbia for scientific and benevolent corporations. There is a provision in the code for an incorporation of this kind by having the proper articles drawn up, setting forth the purpose of the organization, its line of work and its membership, naming for the time being three trustees, two of which at that particular time must be residents of the District of Columbia, and filing those articles with the Recorder of Deeds. It is approved and that becomes the charter. The Association is then a body corporate with all of the rights and privileges of any other organization of that kind.

A great many organizations have been formed in the District of Columbia under that provision of the code. It seems to me about as simple and as comprehensive as any of the laws of any of the states, and about as free from any burdens or obligations of reports or matters of that kind. If it is the sense of this meeting, and I think you have quite a representative membership here, that this organization be so incorporated I shall take pleasure, after this meeting, in drafting proper papers, presenting them to some of the members for signature and perfecting a corporation.

The President: That seems to be an excellent suggestion.

Dr. Morris: I move that this recommendation be adopted.

Mr. Foster: I second the motion.

The motion was carried.

The convention adjourned at 12 o'clock.

AFTERNOON EXCURSION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION

October 7, 1920, 12:45

The members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, in convention at Washington, D. C., October 7, 1920, made an excursion which included visits to the thirty-acre bearing northern pecan plantation of T. P. Littlepage; Dr. Walter Van Fleet's Government Station for the production of blight-resisting chestnuts and chickapins and other new hybrids, at Bell Experiment Plot, Glendale, Maryland; and the old Jefferson pecan trees at Marietta. The following notes were taken at points along the route:

Dr. Van Fleet: These are hybrids between the chinkapin and the Japan chestnut showing the blight even after thirteen years immunity. We do not do anything to check the disease at all.

There is a Japan variety said not to take it but you see how it affects it. It girdles it and the new wood builds it up. The tree is doomed. It is gone now but it has made a tremendous attempt to recovery. You see the new growth that has tried to come out there trying to bridge it and make it up. Of course even that is hopeful. In view of that we feel justified in breeding. The Chinese resist it much better. They take it more readily but they resist it far better. The efforts at self-bridging are quite successful.

This is one of the hybrids we have at Arlington. The parent tree got along for thirteen years without a sign of blight. By artificial inoculation we have given it the disease but it does not get it in the trunk. This is a Chinese chestnut seven years old and has had three crops. We took the most virulent virus and made a few inoculations and with absolutely no care the wound is closing up. The tree is apparently quite healthy. This is the Chinese Molissima, not of real good quality. These are only seven years old and have already borne three very good crops. The nuts are somewhat larger than the wild native and ripen about six weeks earlier.

There are 1,100 trees here and I think about a hundred have been killed outright and probably 75 per cent of them show infections but there are a few individuals that do not seem to get it. It seems almost impossible to inoculate them. We are letting the disease run its way purely through elimination. It is only those that can stand it through a series of years that are supposed to be worth anything at all.

Probably no species is immune from it; I do not think we can use the word "immunity" in connection with it.

The party then visited the old Jefferson place at Marietta, and viewed the immense pecan trees which were given to Judge Duval by Thomas Jefferson. Thence to Mr Littlepage's plantation.

Mr. Littlepage: These trees are set 100 by 120. The Butterick is a good grower. There is a great difference in the growth of the cultivated and the uncultivated ones. I would quit working about the first of August. The first of August here they are growing actively.

Question: Is that the habit of the pecan to set a crop and then drop off?

Mr. Littlepage: Yes, young trees will do that. This is a typical Busseron. They were all sprinkled with nuts; this tree had fifty nuts on this spring. There are some caterpillars on the Stuart. This is the work of the caterpillars on the Stuart. It set a number of nuts. This Greenriver is a little larger than the Major. It is one of the prettiest nuts, one of our medium sized northern pecans. The Greenriver grows in a forest in the Green River district in Kentucky. This is the first transplanted pecan tree this far north that has grown nuts.

Dr. Morris: In two or three years you will have a crop on them.

Mr. Littlepage: That is a Major, they grow like the Cedars of Lebanon. You don't see a winter-killed twig on a tree. They were full of nuts this spring.

Mr. Morris: That is so thrifty and so hardy that it might have some species of hickory in it.

Mr. Littlepage: The Stabler black walnut is much better than the Thomas. All black walnuts are reasonably easy to propagate. I have them all around over the farm; I stick pecans around the fences, or wherever I have a space. This chestnut is a European variety. It bears a big striped nut. It tastes a little better than the sweet potato.

Dr. Morris: It is good for cooking. It is the same as the Marron.

Mr. Littlepage: They are the Indiana hazels, and this is an European filbert.

EVENING SESSION

Thursday October 7 1920 8 P. M.

The convention was called to order by the President, Mr. Linton, at 8 o'clock.

The President: The presentation of the next speaker will be made by Mr. Littlepage.

Mr. Littlepage: I want to take just one or two minutes in introducing Mr. Reed, the next speaker on the program. The Department of Agriculture, as we all know, is an aggregation of many of the very brightest men in this country. Those of us who are here in Washington know that at times it is sadly in need of organization. It is perfectly apparent to anybody who has judgment enough to make observations that there is a great deal of very valuable material down there going to waste for the lack of organization. Perhaps it will always be so. I do not know. Institutions are not perfect because the individuals constituting these institutions are not perfect. The Department of Agriculture is, taken as a whole, a most wonderful institution. I do wish, however, that the Department officials would not always wait until they think they know exactly all the facts about a thing before they publish it. I sometimes wish they had enough nerve to say: "Now, this is what we found out today. We may change our minds tomorrow and if we do we will tell you so," the same as any other honest citizen. Why in the world they collect all the data they do, file it away day after day, month after month and year after year, and publish it after it is of no use to anyone on this earth, I never could figure out! I know it is a difficult problem because if the Department of Agriculture should say today that Winesap apples grow beautifully on Maryland hills some fellow would promptly capitalize that and go to selling the Maryland hills, the water underneath, the air above them and everything around them for the modest sum of ten times what it was worth. So that is the other side of it. It makes it necessary for the Department of Agriculture, of course, to be cautious. I know, however, that you all think as I do because you have said so to me but you do not all have the nerve to get up here and say as I do that the Department of Agriculture ought to give us more of these data; that they ought to give it to us for what it is worth today and in this lifetime, leaving it to us to have a little common sense to know that what they say must be taken as they say it. However, I did not get up here to say all of those things. My purpose is to introduce the speaker.

Now, I happen to know a great deal about Mr. Reed's work. I know that he is one of the most active men in the Department and one of the men who has, as much as anybody in the Department of Agriculture, the confidence of those of us who know about the project that he is working on. Mr. Reed has more work in the Department of Agriculture than he can do and I have been trying to lay out some additional work for him. For example, we have found in Southwestern Illinois a larger pecan than any propagated in the North. I saw it in a bunch of Schleys which is the premier pecan of the South. It was larger than many of the Schleys. We don't know anything more about the pecan but I would like to know about this and several others. That is one little job that comes under Mr. Reed's supervision and he ought to have more time and more help. As a matter of fact everybody in the Department thinks he should have more money for his particular project. Those of us who are interested in nut work think the nut people should have more money. The Department was very fortunate in receiving Mr. Reed who came from Michigan. I have talked to him many times and I have never found him yet to make a statement about anything in the nut world that he could not back up. In an illustrated lecture of this kind you have the good fortune to get a great many data that you cannot get in any other way. I wish the whole country that has an interest in these matters could hear it. If I could think of anything else good to say about Mr. Reed I would say it. He is entitled to it. (Applause.)

NUT CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES.

C. A. Reed, Washington, D. C.

We are annually importing into the United States from $30,000,000 to more than $52,000,000 worth of nuts. In this country, production is of leading importance with but three species,—the Persian (English) walnut, the pecan, and the almond. Of these together, we are producing in the neighborhood of $26,000,000 worth of nuts. In addition to these three species, two others now bid fair to become of considerable importance within the next decade. These are the filbert of the Northwest and the Eastern black walnut. In the Northwest, the filbert is receiving intensive attention at the hands of a considerable number of skilled horticulturists. The species is making rapid strides and in a short while will probably rank fourth in importance with reference to the extent to which it has been developed horticulturally. Possibly because of the extent to which it is common over the United States, the black walnut might properly now be rated as fourth as that nut has as great, if not a greater, range and is of interest to more people in this country than is any other one species of nut. It remains, however, to be seen how rapidly it will be developed by the pomologists.

The view before you is one which some of you have seen before. It was taken in the famous Vrooman orchard of Persian walnut trees at Santa Rosa, California. This is the largest and most noted orchard of Franquette variety in the country. It is from this orchard that scions have been obtained for the propagation of a great part of the Franquette orchards in this country.

In the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon, the walnut has received a large amount of attention during recent years; its development there has made rapid strides, and in the better soils, the trees grow rapidly and ordinarily bear very well. The photograph before you was taken in February, 1920, in an orchard near Hillsboro. It was situated on low but rich land and I regret to say that it was practically wiped out of existence by an unusual cold spell occurring from the 12th to the 15th of December in 1919. During that spell, the temperatures went down in some points of the Willamette Valley to 24 degrees below zero. As nearly as could be told at the time the picture was taken the trees were all killed to the snowline which was from a foot and a half to two feet above ground. The owner has since reported that he cut the trees down to that line.

To some extent, the Persian walnut is grown in the eastern part of the United States. It was introduced here long before it was on the Atlantic Coast, but this side of the Rocky Mountains, it has nowhere become of great commercial importance. The photograph before you was taken in 1911. It shows a seedling orchard of twenty-three Persian walnut trees in Bucks County in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. The orchard then appeared to be in first-class condition with no sign of winter-injury, but so far as we have been able to ascertain, the trees have never borne important crops of nuts.

This tree before us is the parent, or original tree of the Nebo variety from Southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a variety first propagated by Messrs. Rush and Jones. It is one of the old historical trees of that section, and while the nut it produces is very good in many respects, for various reasons, the variety is no longer being propagated to great extent.

This is the parent Rush tree, another variety now not propagated as much as formerly, but one which, nevertheless, is a good sort and regarded as being well worthy of planting about the home grounds in sections of the eastern part of the country to which the species is adapted.

The Persian walnut is evidently quite at home from the eastern shore of Maryland up through Delaware and New Jersey to Long Island and lower Connecticut. From this strip west inland to well toward York and Harrisburg in Southern Pennsylvania, it is by no means uncommon. To some extent, it is grown in Western New York and close to Lake Erie in Northern Ohio. There are some trees in Eastern Michigan and a very few in what is known as the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, but with few exceptions, the crops they bear are uncertain.

The tree before us is the parent of the Aurand variety named in honor of Mr. Geo. D. Aurand of Lewistown, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. The gentleman in the foreground is Mr. Aurand in the act of examining a split in the bark caused by winter-injury. This trouble is fairly prevalent over a great part of the east.

Leaving the walnut industry for the time being, we will take a fleeting glance at the pecan industry. The greater part of our pecan crop comes from wild trees in the Southwest. The view before us is typical of Texas scenes especially in such towns as San Saba, Brownwood and others where nuts are brought from the country in wagon loads much the same as are cereals in the northern states. Pecan orchard development has taken place almost wholly in states east of the limits of the native range. In sections to which the pecan has been indigenous development has been very slow. The greatest and most extensive development of any section happens to be in Southwestern Georgia.

The view before us was taken in an orchard of Frotscher trees in Thomasville some 20 miles north of the Georgia-Florida state line. The trees were planted in 1905, set fifty feet apart, and last spring, because of crowding, the alternate trees were removed. The lower limbs had begun to die and the nuts from the lower branches had, for several years, been inferior in both size and filling quality.

The trees in the orchard before you were three years planted when photographed. This is an orchard in the Albany district of southwestern Georgia. It is in the immediate Albany district that more pecan planting has taken place than in any other one district of the whole South. It is possible to go from Albany in most any direction and to pass through orchards on both sides of the road with rows of pecan trees extending as far as the eye can see in each direction.

There is more or less, of a prevailing idea that the pecan is a California product but it is the exception rather than the rule to find thrifty and productive trees in that state. The tree before you is one which bore enough nuts during a recent year to bring $125 in the market, at 20 cents a pound.

Coming considerably nearer home, we find the parent tree of the Butterick variety situated on the Illinois side of the Wabash River a short distance below Vincennes, Indiana. The range of the pecan, as the most of you probably know, extends well up into Iowa along the bank of the Mississippi River and also into Central Illinois along the Illinois and other rivers and north to Terre Haute, Indiana, along the Wabash. The Butterick has been regarded as one of the most promising northern varieties. Reports which seem to be fairly well authenticated are to the effect that this fine tree has since partially died because of having its roots cut in the digging of a ditch.

Two years ago, Dr. J. B. Curtis (who is present in the audience) and myself spent a week's vacation in Eastern Maryland. At Easton we were greatly surprised to find what we agreed was the largest planted pecan tree we had ever seen. During the past summer, this tree has been photographed and its measurements taken: It has a girth measurement at breast height of 15 feet. Its spread is 129 by 138 feet. Its height was estimated at approximately 135 feet. It is not one of the largest pecan trees of the country as larger trees are not uncommon in many sections from Southern Indiana, south and west to Texas but they are native and not planted trees. We know this to be a planted tree as there are no native pecans in the state of Maryland. This tree bears with a fair degree of regularity. We are told that in 1917 it yielded approximately twelve bushels of nuts which, although small, were exceedingly good and a delight to the children of the whole neighborhood.

Taking up the almond industry, the view before you is of interest because of historical reasons rather than otherwise. It is one of the few remaining large orchards planted by the late Mr. A. T. Hatch known as father of the principal varieties of California today. Mr. Hatch planted several hundred acres of almonds in the vicinity of Suisun about midway between Sacramento and San Francisco but cold winds from San Francisco Bay prevent almond trees in that section from being commercially productive, and as result, the section has been abandoned as an almond center. Nevertheless, this picture is of interest because it was in these very orchards that were originated the famous Hatch varieties, the Ne Plus Ultra, Nonpareil, I. X. L. and the Drake. A great part of this orchard has since been topworked with prunes.

Almond orchards in bloom afford some of California's most beautiful sights during February. The two trees in the foreground are typical specimens of I. X. L. while in full bloom. The almond begins bearing at about the same age as does the peach; at 5 or 6 years from the time the trees are planted, they begin to pay a little more than the cost of up-keep, and at 8 years, they are regarded as being in full bearing.

This scene was taken in one of the oldest orchards in the state of California. The trees were planted in about 1870. The picture affords a typical illustration of one of the methods of harvesting. The nuts are being thrashed or "knocked" from the trees to heavy canvas sheets spread upon the ground which are drawn from tree to tree by horse power. The nuts are loaded loose in wagons or in sacks and taken to some central plant where they are run through hulling machines and the nuts separated from the hulls after which they are spread out in trays and left in the sun to dry. At that season of the year, there is practically no danger of dew or rain and, after being exposed for several days and nights during which they are frequently stirred, they are taken to the nearest exchange point, bleached and put forth into final shape for the market.

A very important factor in the success of almond production is the honey-bee. Bee keepers shift their hives from orchard to orchard during the blossoming period making a profit out of the honey and at the same time charging a rental to the orchard owners. The bees, of course, attend to the matter of interpollination.

In some sections, it is necessary to equip the orchards with smudge or fire pots which are kept filled with crude oil and fired at the moment the temperature goes down to below the freezing point during the blossoming period. In one district these pots were this last year fired again and again but after all the temperature went down to a point such that a great part of the crop was lost. We are told that it is possible to raise the temperature 26 to 34 degrees. It is tedious work and a dirty job. The oil is placed in the pots in the daytime and the firing usually takes place in the latter part of the night, very often after 5 o'clock in the morning.

We come now to the filbert industry. One of the reasons why filberts were planted in the northwest was because the native hazels grow there with great vigor. This picture shows a typical stool of the native hazel as it is commonly seen in the western parts of Oregon and Washington. Not infrequently it attains a height of 30 or 35 feet and when trained to single stems, the trees not infrequently develop trunk diameters of from 6 to 8 inches.

The Mr. Vollertsen of the Northwest is Mr. A. A. Quarnberg of Vancouver, Washington. In 1893 Mr. Quarnberg read an article by the late Professor H. E. Van Deman in which the latter urged the experimental planting of the filbert in the Northwest. Mr. Quarnberg ordered two trees of the Du Chilly variety from Mr. Felix Gillett, a Frenchman and then proprietor of the Barren Hill Nurseries, Nevada City, California. These were planted in February of 1894 and are believed to have been the first trees of that variety shipped to the Northwest. They are so close together that they are considerably crowded but still they have done fairly well, bearing in some years as much as 45 pounds together.

This is a view of the first filbert orchard planted in the Northwest. It consists of three hundred trees mainly of the Barcelona and Du Chilly varieties obtained from Mr. Gillett in January of 1901 by Mr. Quarnberg and planted by him for a neighbor, Mr. John E. Norelius.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Barcelona variety had already become fairly well established in the Northwest when Mr. Quarnberg first introduced the Du Chilly to that section. The picture before you is of one of the oldest Barcelona trees that has come to my personal attention. It shows a tree in Portland measuring 45 inches in circumference one foot above ground. It is perhaps the largest filbert tree in the United States. When visited during the past September, the limbs were bending down with nuts and an estimate was made that it would have from 50 to 70 pounds of mature nuts.

The tree before us was another Barcelona of good size. In 1919 it matured a crop of 45 pounds of nuts. However, unfortunately it was caught by the cold spell already referred to and the tree about half killed. It stands in a low place in an orchard of some fifty trees and was one of the most seriously affected.

Returning to the East, we have before us a picture of an Italian Red filbert tree in the orchard of Messrs. Vollertsen and McGlennon north of Rochester, New York. It is a young tree not over two years old. Each terminal has a cluster of nuts. Mr. Vollertsen is observing it closely and thus far regards it favorably.

Mr. J. G. Rush of West Willow, Pennsylvania has brought out a native hazel which offers considerable promise to nut planters. It is a remarkably prolific variety and the nuts are both large and thin-shelled. This picture illustrates something of its heavy bearing tendency.

We come now to the black walnut. One of the first varieties propagated was the Thomas. This picture is one of several hundred grafted trees of that variety owned by Mr. E. A. Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois. As here shown, they are very prolific and these hundred trees grown mainly on hillsides and untillable lands are furnishing Mr. Riehl with a very fair income. On the whole, the Thomas is a good variety. It cracks much better than does the average black walnut but still there are some others which are a shade better in the matter of cracking quality. The picture before you shows the parent tree of the variety first known as Rush but later changed to Herman in order to avoid confusion of names with the Rush Persian walnut. This variety has been propagated to some extent but according to recent accounts, the parent tree has been cut down. The tree now before you is the parent of a well known variety, the Stabler. It is situated in Montgomery County, Maryland, some 20 miles from the city of Washington. Reports have it that this tree bore 30 bushels of nuts in one mythical year, but the present owner states that the maximum yield of any year since he has known the tree has been 10 or 11 bushels of hulled nuts. The variety is being propagated by several nurserymen and trees are available for planting.

Another variety now being propagated by the nurserymen is the Ohio, the parent tree of which is some 20 or 30 miles out of Toledo in the state after which it was named. This picture, (showing seven nuts) illustrates a remarkable tendency on the part of young grafted trees to bear at an early age. This tree in the nursery of Mr. Jones of Lancaster, Pa., was grafted in May and photographed in September one year following. Of course early bearing is not wholly desirable but in a way it will refute the common belief that black walnuts are necessarily tardy in coming into bearing.

Col. J. C. Cooper, McMinnville, Oregon, President of the Western Walnut Growers Association has on his home grounds two black walnut trees grown from nuts obtained in the East which were 6 years old when this picture was taken. Each of these trees which you will notice are from 20 to 30 feet high bore approximately a peck of nuts during the year when photographed.

The native butternut is a species which has been quite neglected by our horticulturists but through the efforts of Mr. Bixby, a few varieties have been brought out and are now being propagated by the nurserymen. In spite of its thick shell, the flavor of the butternut is preferred by many people to that of any other nut on the market. It is our most hardy species of nut tree. It grows as far north as Maine and Nova Scotia. Two or three recognized varieties are being propagated. Probably those which will soonest be available for dissemination to the public are the Aiken from New Hampshire and the Deming from Connecticut.

One of our most decorative native trees is the American beech. As fine a specimen as is often seen is this one not far from Easton, Maryland photographed during the past summer. It is an enormous tree and very productive. It is one of forty or fifty trees on the grounds of one of the numerous large estates of Eastern Maryland and was planted, so we are told, in 1830. The lady giving this information said that her mother had the trees dug up in the forest by slaves and hauled to their present location in ox carts. Now, ninety years later, they form a magnificent avenue of trees. Fine crops of nuts are borne each year. The nuts are small and most too tedious to extract from the shell to be useful for human consumption, but they go a long way in the finishing off of the turkeys and other poultry in the fall.

Another species of nut which is quite neglected is the Japanese walnut. It has been on trial in this country for perhaps fifty or seventy-five years. It has indicated its adaptability to a wide range of the country; it succeeds on a great variety of soils and it is both hardy and early to come into bearing. It has this disadvantage, however,—the nuts are small; but in flavor the kernals can hardly be distinguished from those of the butternut. Very often it forms a most attractive tree and it should be used to a much greater extent than it is on home lawns.

In Michigan, hickory and black walnut trees have been used along the highways as avenue trees for a considerable period. In Pennsylvania occasionally the Persian walnut is used as an avenue tree. One of the beauty spots along the roadway of Lancaster County is this stretch of roadway under the spreading branches of Persian walnut trees. Senator McNary of Oregon thought so well of the beauty of the filbert that he induced his brother to plant several trees on his lawn in the city of Salem. It is no exageration to say that there are no prettier trees in the city then are these before you.

To a considerable extent, nut raising is being combined with the poultry industry in the Northwest. The poultry raisers claim that some kind of trees are essential to furnish shade in the poultry yards. They say that fruit trees are not desirable for the reason that at harvest time the chickens not only pick and ruin the fruit but themselves get internal disorders. Nut trees, they argue, fit in very well, as the chickens cannot hurt the nuts nor the nuts the chickens. Furthermore, the trees in chicken parks salvage a great deal from the chicken manure which would otherwise be lost. The use of nut trees in this way is a practice which it would seem could well be introduced to good advantage in the eastern states.

Among the ornamentals, it is difficult to imagine a species which could more effectively be used than the pecan. The picture before you was taken of a comparatively young tree perhaps 30 or 40 years old on the home grounds of a private citizen near Easton, Maryland at practically our own latitude. It is a most beautiful tree.

Rightly used, the black walnut is also one of our most effective species in the landscape. The picture before you is of a tree 51 years old. It stands in front of the home residence of a sister to United States Senator Charles L. McNary of Salem, Oregon. When photographed, this tree measured 10 feet, 6 inches in girth at breast height. It would be hard to imagine a more noble and graceful nut.

Along the roadways of California, we not uncommonly find the native black walnut used as an avenue tree. It is very refreshing and cooling on a hot day to drive under trees of the sort illustrated in the picture before you. This avenue of trees is along the Lincoln Highway less than a mile west of the University grounds at Davis.

The President: The next speaker on the program will be presented by Dr. Morris.

Dr. Morris: They say that a biographer unconsciously writes his autobiography. That is not tautology. Some one writing of the late Frank N. Mayer said: "The plant hunter and explorer is the unsung Columbus of horticulture." Our next speaker was the one who wrote that in Mr. Meyer's biography. We all recognize it as autobiography. Emerson tells us that every successful institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. There were heroes before Agamemnon and botanists before Dr. Fairchild, but with the beginning of the new century there came into existence the development of a new idea, that of exploration in foreign countries for the purpose of bringing to us their valuable plant products. It was one of those things which we may say makes the whole world kin because the economists tell us that basically the food supply is fundamental to all subsequent human activities. Dr. Fairchild organized the machinery of exploration for purposes of introduction into this country of valuable plants from foreign lands. There is perhaps at the present time no one who serves better as peace maker than does the one who gives the world more food. From the economist's standpoint the food supply subtends all advances in civilization. Now the hour is late and we all know what Dr. Fairchild has done. Any remarks on my part are made because they belongs to the form of polite procedure rather than because of need for telling of things which Dr. Fairchild has accomplished.

Dr. Fairchild: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Northern Nut Growers Association. When I face men and women who are doing things in agriculture I feel a peculiar degree of embarrassment. I do not know why but I suppose it is because what I have done, what little I have done in bringing in these new things, has never enabled me to get to the bottom of any of the things that I have brought in. In other words I feel that I am in the presence of a number of men who know down to the very smallest minutiae the business that they are engaged in. Now I do not know these minutiae about plants. I wish I did. There is nothing more fascinating in the world than to take one crop and learn to know it "down to the ground." It is coming to be one of the greatest things in the imagination of man, this grappling with the fundamental problems of agriculture which are wrapped up in the varieties of the plants that we grow. I have had a very severe education in that matter of varieties and I want to congratulate you as a body of men and women who are individually going to find out what these best varieties are.

I suppose that the talk that Mr. Reed and I had in a bamboo grove out in Chico., California, when we were trying to find out uses for the bamboo and Reed said: "Well, the pecan and almond growers want to knock the nuts off their trees with these bamboo poles," is what led up to this talk, and I want to thank Mr. Reed for the opportunity to show slides of a few of the new plants which we are working on in the Department of Agriculture.

We brought in so many of them, (47,000 different kinds) in these 22 years that the office of Plant Introduction has been in operation that Mr. Reed suggested that the nut growers would like to have thrown on the screen pictures of the nuts of foreign countries. I said that we did not have any. Then I began to dig into our own literature, project reports, experimenters cards, correspondence and the other recording machinery that we have and I found that we had a good many. I want to make it perfectly plain to you that what I am going to do tonight is simply to open a door and show you the possibilities of some of these foreign nuts. There are a great many more that we have not succeeded in landing on the shores of America, and if any one of you will come to my office on 13th and F streets I will throw all the correspondence and photographs on the table and let you look through it.

It has been said that the Department's work is badly organized. Yes, it is badly organized. But I do not know how you are going to very well organize with a small body of men a group of projects every one of which is a life job for a man, especially when you cannot get the men, and when you do get them they do not stay on the job for life. So there is the great difficulty. Mr. Littlepage has hit the nail on the head. The Department of Agriculture is not well organized but it is not an easy thing to organize experimental work on at least 150 different kinds of industries with the money and the men we have. The fact that the investigations require the men to be on the land close to their work and that we are all in city buildings, is a great handicap. We have scarcely a tree or shrub or plant of any kind that bears on our work within two or three miles of the Department of Agriculture building. We need the land. We need a great many more men, and we need more money.

I landed in Greece in 1901. In Athens I saw them selling on the streets these pistache nuts which I opened with my fingers. The kernels are a brilliant green. I had never seem them before. I had heard of them. They were sold around the streets by the Greek peddlers and called pistachios. The pistache or pistachio industry is one which I wish some young, energetic man of seventy would take up. I say 70 because it requires a young man of seventy to take up one of these nut industries, the boys of 26 are too old. Some young fellow of seventy should go into the pistache industry and find out what there is in it and develop it into a great industry. The American Consul in Palestine told me six or eight years ago that there was no plant culture in all Palestine that paid so well as a pistache orchard. Trees have been known to yield as much as 40 to 50 dollars apiece. The Grecian pistaches are different from those of Tunis and Algeria and others of the Mediterranean countries. There are a good many different varieties.

This picture shows a piece of praline made of pistaches. This is sold on the streets of Athens and compares very favorably with our pralines made in New Orleans from the kernel of the pecan.

Mr. Chisholm, who was connected with the Consulate in Athens and who spoke Greek very well, took me out and showed me what these pistache trees looked like and when I found this miscellaneous lot of grafted pistache trees I made an arrangement to purchase the whole collection and send it to this country. I had great difficulty in getting the American Consul in Piraeus to help me ship them. I could not wait indefinitely and it took a good while to have them dug and packed. I asked him if he would send them and he said he was very busy. I told him this was a matter which concerned the people of the United States and if he did not have time to do it I would telegraph to the Secretary of Agriculture and tell him that the Consul in Athens was too busy to ship these plants. Finally he consented to ship them and this was the first shipment of grafted pistache trees to arrive in America. They were badly grafted, badly packed and badly prepared and I think only one of this whole collection survived and is now growing in the Gallespie grounds at Montecito, California.

Mr. Kearney ought to be here tonight and Mr. Swingle and Dr. Rixford. These three men have given more attention to the pistache than I have. Mr. Kearney was studying the date palm industry of Southern Tunis and in connection with it he made a study of the pistache industry of the desert region of the coast of Tunis. This picture represents an Arab standing beside an old pistache tree that probably is forty or fifty years of age. It represents the pistache in its winter dress. They are deciduous trees. They plant one male tree to about twenty females. We have had a great real of difficulty in propagating these pistache trees. We have five different species of stock on which to grow them, and we ought to learn all the best varieties in the world. But unfortunately some of the best varieties in Sicily are infested with a moth which lays its eggs in the twigs just below the leaf scar and it is impossible for the entomologist to detect these eggs without destroying the buds. That apparently trivial circumstance has made it impossible for us to get these cuttings in from Sicily without sending a trained horticulturist there for them. We never have had the money to send a man there who could do it, a man who had had the necessary experience. As a consequence we have not as big a collection of these pistache varieties as we ought to have.

These men in the photograph are getting the scions for Mr. Kearney, and I am glad to say that these particular scions which they cut are now growing in California. Mr. Kearney also on this same trip visited the Duke de Bronte estate on the slopes of Mount Etna. It was an estate bequeathed by the King of Italy to Lord Nelson, who was made the Duke de Bronte and it is still the property of the Nelson family. Mr. Beck, who was the manager for this estate and with whom we have had correspondence for nearly 18 years, gave us perhaps more information than we have gotten from any other foreign source on the cultivation of the pistache. The Trabonella, which was one of the best commercial varieties, came from the Bronte estate on the slopes of Mount Etna, where pistache growing is a paying industry. In Europe the nuts are very largely used, outside of the Mediterranean region for making the pistache ice cream because of the green color in the seed itself, and in the Mediterranean region both the yellow and green varieties as we are coming to use them in this country, as table nuts. The highest price is paid for the green pistache nuts which are used in ice creams and confectioneries. Here are two Sicilian horticulturists, one of them holding a bundle of bud sticks. This Trabonella variety is now growing in America. We have collected pistache nuts from many parts of the world. A very interesting man by the name of Jewett who became acquainted with the late Ameer of Afghanistan procured for us the Afghanistan pistache. I got in correspondence with him through the Consul in Calcutta. Through a mistake made in sending some of this correspondence direct instead of to Calcutta it nearly cost him his life. I did not know the conditions there and asked Jewett in my letter what the possibilities were of sending an Agricultural explorer there. The letter fell into the hands of the Ameer and aroused his suspicions. Jewett was one of the two English speaking persons at that time in the country. One Sunday morning my door bell rang, and Jewett came to my house in Connecticut Avenue with two big saddle bags filled with seed sent by the Ameer. This collection of pistache seeds with its Afghanistan label composed part of the collection of seeds. Very few of the seeds grew however and the seedlings, which like many nut trees do not come true to seed, have not produced any varieties of particular value.

A year ago I had the pleasure of making a motor tour through California. I went to see Leonard Coats, one of those real pioneers of 65 or 70 years of age, who has perhaps done as much for California horticulture as any other one nurseryman, and he took me up into his orchard on the hill side overlooking his nursery where no drops of rain had fallen between the months of March and October when I was there and where they only have 22 inches of rainfall anyway, and I found growing there this collection of pistache trees which we had sent him about ten years ago. The nuts are borne towards the ends of the branches. The tree is able to withstand any amount of drought and as I sat there and he told me how prohibition had wiped out the vineyards of the surrounding country, how the Italians had deserted them and gone back to Italy, I could not help feeling that in this beginning on his hillsides we had the possibility of covering those thousands of acres of hillsides which exist in California today, from which the grape vines have been taken out, with a nut crop of the very first importance. These little beginnings are really the most interesting things in life. I read in the paper today that this is the ninety-fourth anniversary of the first railroad in America and my mind went back to a conversation I had with Edward Everett Hale when he told me that his father was the first man to bring over an English locomotive to America. What do you suppose was the principal objection that the people had to railway exploitation in this country? They could not see how two trains could pass each other on the same track. So his father brought over from England a little model switch and put it down in his parlor and took people in there and showed them that two trains could pass if one ran off on a siding. That story of Edward Everett Hale has helped me to understand why it is that most people hesitate to go ahead into any new industry always seeing some impossibility in its development. I could probably prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that not a single one of these nut trees I am showing you tonight could ever be made a success. Notwithstanding that they are successful.

This is one of the Sfax varieties from Tunis growing in our plant introduction gardens at Chico. We had to establish gardens where we could grow these trees and send out the young plants to growers and in these gardens we have test nurseries or test orchards as we call them where we grow these fruits. This is an Assyrian variety brought in by old Dr. Fuller who spent some time as a missionary in Asia Minor and became convinced of the importance of the pistache industry, and has been one of the pioneers in these small beginnings. This is a six years old tree. This is 15 years old a seedling tree near Fresno. It has borne a good many crops of fair sized pistache nuts as large as the Trabonella, the Sfax, the Tunis and the Alleppo and those forms which are going to be the real pistaches of the future in this country. The pistache in fruit is a most interesting sight. The nuts are pinkish. They have the pinkness of the peach, almost, without the fuz and they are covered with a thin skin which is taken off usually with the fingers. The nut inside has a texture that makes it very attractive. When they are first gathered it is very difficult to crack them with the fingers but if they are put in the oven and roasted they open up and leave a little suture into which you put your thumb nails and pry the ends open.

This picture gives you some idea of the yield of the pistache. It is a fair yielder, as much as fifty pounds of nuts having been borne by eight or nine year old trees. Ours have not done as well as that. The price of course ranges like the price of all other nuts. They sold last year for 75 cents a pound here in Washington. The kernels sell for $1.50.

This gives you a good idea of the pistache fruit with its outer shell, the nut and the green interior. If any of you are going to California and do not like the idea of taking up hazel nuts, walnuts and pecans, if you will take up this industry we will help you all we can. It will grow in Arizona, New Mexico, and we have records of them growing in Arkansas. They will stand a temperature below zero. Trees have been known to live through several winters even in Southern Kansas.

In all these investigations we have found the stock problem is very important. Here we have the Pistachia atlantica which has much smaller seeds. It is this that we are using most commonly as a stock for the pistaches that are being grown in California. Frank N. Meyer brought back from China the seeds of the Chinese pistache, the hardiest of all pistaches, a tree which has been almost hardy even as far north as Washington and central Kansas. It is not only a nut tree but a magnificent ornamental tree and grows to a very large size. We have used it as an avenue tree leading to our plant introduction gardens in Chico because it colors up so beautifully in the autumn and the spring. In the spring the tips of these leaves and branches are a brilliant pink and in the autumn it turns a gorgeous scarlet. It is destined to be one of the best landscape trees of California in our opinion. It grows to be centuries old.

Frank Meyer standing beside a tree which has stood three centuries at least. Imagine what pleasure he would have had had he only lived to walk under this great avenue in his old age.

The question of congeniality between the true pistache and the Chinese pistache is shown here. We rather jumped to the conclusion, when we found that the ordinary pistache overgrew the Chinese pistache, that perhaps it was not so good a stock as we first thought, but I notice, looking back at my photograph taken in Greece in 1901, that the regular stocks used by the Greeks for the pistache are overgrown in the same way by the true pistache. We have much larger trees than these now in Chico and as the Chinese pistaches are very old and large trees we have come to the conclusion that in all probability the pistache will be successful on this Chinese stock.

I was walking through a market in Hong Kong in 1902 and I saw a few bushels of nuts that I had never heard of or seen before. The nuts looked like acorns but when I picked them up I found them as hard as hickory nuts. I cracked one of them with a brick and it was almost as hard to crack as a hickory nut. It was unmistakably an acorn, I thought, and I bought a bushel of the nuts and sent them to this country. It is called Pisania by botanists and it has many of the characteristics of an acorn. The kernel of this nut comes out whole and for that reason it would be very easily cracked by mechanical means. It has a sweetness which does not suggest an acorn. It does not remind you of the acorn. It is a commercial product in Southern China shipped down the West river and it seemed to me well worth while trying to grow it in the United States. We have had a great deal of trouble with it. We did not find the right place for it at first. It was hardy here in Washington, even, for a few seasons but the temperature at seventeen, eighteen and twenty below zero finally killed it out. It is now growing down in Mississippi.

Here is a photograph sent me from Honkong, the only one I have of the tree as it appears on the hills of Honkong. This tree which is now 11 feet tall on the place of Mr. Joe Williams at Langdon, Mississippi, is one of the few that is now growing in the United States. There is one in Southern California. It probably would be perfectly hardy along the Gulf coast. Just how good a bearer it is going to prove I do not know but it is very interesting even to register the fact that the plant is established in the Southern States.

The Macadamia ternifolia, or Queensland nut, is not quite so well known in Queensland as I thought it was. A very brilliant young man from Australia, by the name of Johnston, passed through my office the other day and I showed him the photograph of the Macadamia and to my chagrin he did not know much about it, although he was a very good botanist and a very keen man. He said "We do not pay much attention to these things over there." That is really characteristic of many of the foreign plants that we have brought in. They are not developed in their own countries any more than some of the fruits which we have in this country are not developed by us. Mr. Littlepage and I are going out in a day or two to see if we can find some larger papaws. Now the papaw has been just as badly neglected by the Americans as the Macadamia by the Australians and it may be that the only way to get the papaw developed is to send it to some other country and get them to develop it. We do not always develop our own possibilities.

This is a tree grown in Avon Park, Florida. It interests me very much because it looks as if it would be a good bearer, is suited to the sandy lands of southern and central Florida, seems to be quite hardy and is a beautiful nut. It will vie with any other edible nut that I know of. This tree is in the Royal Palm Gardens in Palm Beach. The trees were brought in by us about 1905 or 1906.

This is a tree in Cuba where it is perfectly at home.

This gives you an idea of the character of the nut in a bunch. This is the nut. The shells when opened are as attractive as anything I know of. This is a very thick walled variety. We have much thinner walled forms that have come from Hawaii where it is now being grown. The dark part is a maroon brown and the lighter part is a brilliant creamy yellow. Altogether it is an extremely attractive nut, an excellent eating nut and has very good food qualities. We have had them analyzed, and all the data are at the disposal of you gentlemen at any time you wish to consult our files.

One of the first pieces of foreign work I was asked to do for the government was to get and import the hard-shelled almonds of Spain. Most of you have eaten the Jordan almond and I imagine most of you think it comes from California, but there are very few Jordans grown in California and, so far as the investigations go which I have been able to make in California in co-operation with the candy manufacturers, I have discovered that the California growers are not growing the best almond in the world. That the IXL and the Nonpareil and other almonds are not considered sufficiently good for such men as Lowney to use in the manufacture of their almond candies was a surprise to me. And the reason? In the first place the skin of the kernel itself is too thick, the nut is too brittle and it has not the flavor of the imported nut. I was shocked the other day to read from cover to cover a bulletin on the subject of Almonds, and to find that not one word was said of flavor. It had to be a good cracker; but the marketable qualities did not take into consideration the question of the flavor of the kernel, its hardness or the thickness of skin.

This picture on the screen was taken in southeastern Spain. These are the almond crackers of Spain and a poorer lot of people I have never visited in my life. The little children, not over four years old, instead of playing as ours play, carry around with them in their hands little bundles of wheat straw which they braid with their hands as they play, making sombreros which are shipped to the Argentine. It is a very poor country where these grow. The soil Is very thin and very dry and these almond trees grow on the hillsides. It was with an unpleasant feeling that I took these cuttings from southeastern Spain, and brought them to America. I got them from the trees that were bearing these almonds, they were budded in California and we know where the trees are growing in California from these buds.

This is a view in one of these hillside plantations of southeastern Spain with two of the almond growers.

This is a view in the plains region near Valencia showing both the hard shelled almonds and the soft shelled ones. The soft shelled are those which are easily cracked with the fingers while the hard shelled have to be broken with a hammer or an instrument. It is these hard shelled almonds that we have been interested in getting.

I have not kept in touch with this almond situation as I would have if I had been a specialist on almonds instead of spreading my energies out over the whole field and it is time someone really got into the almond business. I once traveled fifty miles from Bobadilla, Spain to the next railway station between solid walls of seedling almonds in bloom. No American has ever been to these seedling orchards to see what they are. It should be possible to find in those rows that are now 25 years old late flowering varieties which would be adapted to the conditions in California or early flowering varieties which would cross pollinate the Jordan almond. But we have not had the extra man with which to do this and carry out the other things we have been obliged to do. The interesting thing about this Jordan almond is that it behaves differently in our country than it does over in Spain. You notice how smooth each one of these almonds is. There is no sharp keel on the Spanish grown Jordan almond at all. It is smooth all around. Here are the almonds grown in California from the scions which I brought in. You see how these "keels" are developed and the nut has also become more pointed. We have not had an opportunity to investigate this thing thoroughly, but I am convinced that this is an environmental effect. Dr. W. A. Taylor has suggested that the fact that the Jordan flowers before any other variety comes out may mean that the California nuts are the result of self fertilization and this self fertilization may be the cause of their different shape and texture. Either that or the bud wood which I brought over from Spain was not representative of the Jordan variety although I picked it from trees that were bearing these nuts and I saw the nuts and they were typical. Of course it is possible that on the bud stocks which I brought over there was this hereditary tendency to produce these keels. However, we have made importations of the Jordan almond since then with the same result. One of these was grown in California in the desert region and one in Niles where John Rock, the great pioneer horticulturist of California, had his orchards. Both of them behaved in the same way. I sent some of the best kernels from these imported Jordan almonds to Mr. Lowney, the candy manufacturer who imports large quantities of Jordan almonds from Spain, and he reported that he could not use them for his candy manufacture because they were too hard and the skin too tough.

One of the most interesting experiences of my life was in 1903 when I visited a French barber in a little town called Nevada City, California, in the foothills of the Sierras. He had come over to this country without a penny and had set up a barber shop in this little mining village of Nevada City. He had saved from his fees for cutting people's hair and shaving them, $3,000. He had bought a piece of barren hillside which everybody laughed at him for buying; and he sent an order for $2,500 worth of nut trees and fruit trees to a nursery firm in his old home in France. He did this without even having an irrigating system with which to irrigate those plants when they arrived. He told me with tears in his eyes how he had worked night and day, carrying buckets of water to save this collection of plants when it arrived from France. When I visited Felix Gillett in his plantation there, which he called the Barren Hill Nursery, I felt that I had never seen a more delightful spot in my life. It was a kind of a paradise which he had built up by his love for plants and his wonderful knowledge of the varieties which he handled. He certainly was one of the great experts of this country in the nut and fruit industry, particularly the nut industry. It is his collection of hazelnuts which Mr. Reed spoke of as having found its way into Mr. Quarnburg's hands. In fact I was at Mr. Quarnburg's place a year ago last summer and learned that he got his first start from this little French barber in the mountains of Nevada.

This is Felix Gillett standing beside the first Jordan almond tree in America. The difficulty with the Jordan tree in this section was that it flowered too early and too few crops were produced. We have tried a good many sections for the almond and one of the problems, in my opinion, is the development of stocks for it. Here is the IXL on one of Meyer's Chinese stocks (Amygdalus davidiana). It does very well on this stock in the region of San Antonio, Texas. But the future of this almond business ought to have been told you by Meyer after he came back from his trip in Western China. These bushes are of the Tangutian almond, a little bush almond; growing occasionally 15 or 18 or 20 feet in height and hardy. It was Meyer's plan, had he lived, to find some place in Southwest Colorado in which to breed hardy almonds that would cover those hillsides with a food producing plant. I believe had he lived he would have done that for we have gotten together already for the breeders a number of forms of great promise. Mr. Wight of the Office of Pomological Investigations is now in California doing breeding work, and I hope his life will be spared so that he can produce a practical bush almond. My object in throwing this photograph on the screen is to show you a hillside covered with a food producing plant which has never yet received the attention of human beings, and yet if studied might lead to the production of an entirely new type of almond which will probably grow as far north as the Dakotas.

Jumping from the Dakotas to Florida I want to introduce to you the Candle Nut or Kukui nut of the Hawaiian Islands which is growing in the sandy regions of the tropical belt of Florida. If you will read the literature you will find that it is referred to as a cathartic, resembling in this respect the castor bean. The problem is whether the candle nut as grown in Florida is poisonous or not. Prof. Simpson is growing in his yard in Florida a tree of this Kukui nut and has eaten these nuts for years, and he just sent me a couple quarts of them from his tree and I have tried them on my friends with no injurious results whatever. The thing to look out for is this fetish, this superstition of poison. This is a very hard-shelled nut, very oily and resembles somewhat the Brazil nut. If a market can be made for it, and there does not seem to be any reason why there cannot, there is no reason that they cannot be grown and they will be grown in southern Florida. That country which in 1898 was a wilderness is now developing very rapidly as a region of homes and what they want is plants that they can grow down there that they can live upon.

On the left is one of these trees which has a good many nuts on it. It is in Miami, Florida. This is a branch of one of these Kukui nuts in Miami.

This is probably the least known of any of the nuts. It is the Yeheb nut. It belongs to the order of Leguminosae and they tell us it is so sweet, having between 21 and 22 per cent of sugar, that the native Arab will desert his dates and rich diet, which is the ordinary diet of that region, and take to the Yeheb whenever it comes into fruit. This Yeheb shrub grows in the deserts of Italian Somaliland and ought to succeed in our southwestern country. During the war there was attached to the Italian Embassy the Italian Explorer Captain Vanutelli, who had the distinction of having been captured by a savage chief in Abyssinia and bound for over two months to a black Abyssinian slave. When I spoke to him about this Yeheb nut he said, "Yes, I have eaten it. It is a wonderful nut. Some day I will get you some of it." When the shipment came there were two tons of nuts and I was a little surprised to say the least. They were brought on camel back over the deserts. During the war they took eight or nine months to get to Washington and when they arrived they were all dead. Notwithstanding many attempts this nut is not grown in the United States but we will have it. It is very thin-shelled, the kernels come out whole and have a very sweet, delicate flavor.

You have just come from Dr. Van Fleet's chestnuts. You know that this is the Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) which Meyer found in China. Dr. Van Fleet would probably tell you this is not the way to prune them if you want to increase the chances of these Chinese chestnuts withstanding the bark disease. You are probably familiar with the fact that Meyer discovered over in China on this species the original chestnut bark disease which has destroyed our chestnuts in this country. He found that this variety was highly resistant but not entirely immune to the disease. Dr. Galloway, who is handling the propagation and distribution of these Chinese chestnuts, for our office, wishes to have it understood that in the distribution of these which we will make in the spring we desire to have them sent out in blocks; we would rather not distribute these Chinese chestnuts in single specimens but would be very glad to consider offers from people who have a quarter or a half of an acre that they want to plant. We want to get some idea of the behavior of this species as an orchard crop.

This illustrates the way, as I understand it, that Dr. Van Fleet thinks the trees should be treated, on the left; the way they should not be treated on the right. They seem to be much more susceptible to the disease when pruned up in this neat orchard fashion.

One of Meyer's photographs taken at Fanshan, northeast of Pekin, where he found the chestnut bark disease. This is the way the trees appeared. This gives you some idea of the size of Chinese chestnuts which he got. Those back on the hills are all Chinese chestnuts on rather poor soil as he explains in his description of the photographs.

This is an orchard of Chinese chestnuts as planted by the Chinese on the richer soils of the low lands which show larger trees. Even when full sized they do not compare with our American chestnut but are old enough to show you that they have not been killed by this bark disease.

These trees show signs of the disease but that they have a high degree of resistance is apparently beyond dispute. This shows the black scar near the top which Meyer diagnoses as the remains of the chestnut bark disease.

The scar there in the crotch of this chestnut tree indicates the degree of resistance of this species. Just how it is going to behave here in America no one can tell but that it would be possible to grow orchards of these Chinese chestnuts with the care which you exercise in growing pears or even peaches I think is a pretty safe guess.

Meyer remarks that this tree is probably a century old and with signs of this disease on it. Here is one that he marks as between two and three centuries old.

This, gentlemen, is the newest arrival in this country coming from East Africa near Zanzibar. In Curtis's magazine there is published an account of this nut after Mr. Playfair a British subject who had lived on the island of Zanzibar. This is one of the most curious and most interesting nuts that has been brought to our attention.

It is borne by a climbing vine the stem of which sometimes reaches six or seven inches in diameter. The fruit is between two and one-half and three feet long and eight inches in diameter, and bears between 250 and 264 of these large seeds about the size of chestnuts and with a delicate flavored. In 1884 this Mr. Playfair sent some of these nuts to England, but we have just discovered them so to speak. They will probably grow in our tropical possessions and we must not overlook the fact that after all there is a distinct drift in our agriculture towards the development of that part of the globe which has been so overlooked by horticulturists in the past. It is not at all impossible that some of you who are here in this audience today will buy that Playfairia on the markets.

I thank you very much indeed for your attention.

The President: The hour is late. What Dr. Kellogg may have to say I know will interest you all greatly but it might better be said tomorrow when we are fresh and the attendance will probably be larger than it is this evening. If there is nothing further to come before the meeting tonight we will take a recess until 9:30 in the morning.

The convention adjourned until 9:30 a. m. Friday, October 8.

Morning Session Friday October 8, 1920

The session was called to order by President Linton at 10 o'clock.

The President: I wish first to beg the pardon of the membership of the Association for the little time that I have been able to give to the preparation of this particular paper. To illustrate how limited that time has been, starting from Michigan prior to our meeting yesterday I had less than twenty-four hours to get to Washington. It was necessary that I should call a meeting together at a little town in Michigan where the regular train did not stop. In order to get that train it was necessary to send a man to buy a ticket to that particular point and as he climbed off that train I climbed on. The conductor thought we should be held up for a conspiracy for stopping a train of that character. On reaching Detroit there were a few minutes between trains. After landing in Buffalo I found that there were fifteen minutes to make connections, and after getting on that train I found our good Brother Pomeroy aboard and he had some fine drinks and other things from his home farm so that it was really the midnight hour before I could commence on this document.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

Honorable William S. Linton, Saginaw, Michigan

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I well realize that it is an extreme honor that has come to me in having been named as your President, conferring the privilege also of presiding at this important meeting, your Tenth Annual Session. It has been my lot for almost three score years to mingle largely in civic affairs through organized efforts, for man's betterment along many lines. But with all this experience I do not recall any single group, or undertaking of greater possible and probable value to the people of this country and especially the next and all future generations than the purpose for which we gather today. It is of such vast importance that earnestly and enthusiastically we find foremost in the work, "the best equipped, most intelligent, progressive and successful Agricultural Department" of any government on earth. We are signally honored by the co-operation of one of the most important members of the President's Cabinet, the Secretary of Agriculture, assisting in our program by the presence of leading officials of his staff, all endeavoring in every possible way to supply excellent sustaining foods to mankind, and to add from many choice products of field or of forest, to the joy and comforts of living.

The particular line of effort in which this organization is enlisted is worthy of at least some time and thought upon the part of all persons interested in promoting the welfare of the community, state or county in which they live. Those who will do their share, and there are thousands of them if the subject can be properly presented, can add largely to the food supply of the nation, and provide real delicacies for every table in the homes of the poor as well as in the mansions of the rich. It would be but a few years before we would have in size, and quality the aristocrats of the nut family, in walnuts, hickory nuts, butternuts, even beech nuts, the same as in fruits we have the Bartlett pear, the Northern Spy apple, the Naval orange, the Crawford peach, or the Brighton grape.

Work of inestimable value is being done by our membership in propagating improved varieties that will be rich and lasting in results. We cannot, however, afford to halt for this development of species as our own time is too short, but we can cause to be planted millions of seedlings out of which will come many choice varieties of the future. We would have had them now had our forefathers realized what could be accomplished along this line and the necessity for doing it.

Therefore I would urge with all earnestness that the work be not further postponed, but that we bend every energy to bring about an awakening in this matter that will cause general activity throughout the entire United States. There are several ways of doing this, any one of which should bring results. The only question about any of them being, who can spare the time necessary for this work. My pleasant acquaintance with the members of this Association proves you all to be one hundred per cent Americans, standing well up in your business and professions, and leaders in the civic life of your communities. These excellent points to your credit, really deter each and all from giving time throughout the year to the Association's work and permit only the annual gathering and the events connected therewith that are largely spasmodic only in action and effort.

The Association should be made large enough and strong enough financially to provide a Secretary with proper clerical assistance and fair compensation for work well done.

From fifty to two hundred members can be easily secured in every state in which the Northern nuts grow. Officials of government, States, counties and cities are ready to join in the movement. Road builders, owners of cut-over and other lands only need to have their attention called to what can be accomplished and the great majority will unite with us. The work of the American Forestry Association has promoted our cause also, and the establishing, and naming of historic trees throughout the land can well be made a feature of our plans. Only a day or two ago a Michigan paper carried the following item:

Mount Vernon Walnut ts Thriving in Ingham

Mason. Sept. 26.—Summit R. King, a pioneer of Mason, who was present when the Republican party was born "under the oaks" in Jackson county, has evolved a plan for raising historic trees in Ingham county.

In 1906 he visited the tomb of Washington at Mount Vernon and while there gathered some black walnuts from a tree on the grounds. He planted those and his trees are now in bearing.

He has placed a quantity of the nuts in the hands of the county school commissioner, Miss Daisy Call, to be given to the rural schools that the grounds may be beautified with trees planted in memory of George Washington.

Why not have Mount Vernon walnuts thus distributed throughout the Union. Every school boy and girl in the land would be delighted to get them for planting.

The supply would not equal one hundredth part of one per cent of the demand for them. Then select throughout the country other special or historic trees of various kinds or varieties of nuts and still I am sure the supply would not begin to equal the demand. Long ago I began to arrange for nut crops from some of these historic trees, planted by Washington at his beautiful Mount Vernon home, now the Mecca for prince or pauper and all those millions who love the freedom of glorious America.

Those nuts will be planted in the parks and on the grounds of the people of my home city this very year by the children of our schools who are now in their moulding being taught to revere the name of the father of our country.

This very act of patriotism will cause thousands of boys and girls to have fixed in their minds for youth or age the value of planting the useful trees that will in later years produce food of the very best character for the human race. Carry this message into every city, village and school district and the good work will be duplicated thousands of times and then the movement in which we have so earnestly engaged will have brought forth fruit in great abundance so that even the great majority of those living today, and certainly the generations to come must give this organization and its founders great credit for real and lasting benefits that will prevail for centuries to come.

We all desire at this very important period in our existence as an Association, to strengthen our forces and enlarge the scope of our work. To do it at once let me suggest the early choosing and naming of live vice-presidents in every state that may be united with us in membership; also a general committee on legislation. This committee can do much the coming year when legislatures throughout the country will be in their regular session, to cause the adoption of laws similar to the Michigan Statute known as the Penney Act, which provides for the planting of nut and other food bearing trees along the public highways.

It is one of the most progressive enactments in recent years and its good features should be adopted by every State, and the Federal Government as well, by applying its provisions to National highways also.

In conclusion I wish to thank each and every officer and member for uniform courtesies and favors extended to me throughout the year. My only regret being that official duties, extended traveling, and other unforeseen demands upon my time have prevented me from giving the close personal attention to every detail of the Northern Nut Growers Association business that it otherwise would have been my great pleasure to have done.

My gratitude is cordially extended to each and every member.

Mr. B. G. Foster: Mr. President and Fellow Members: I realize that children should be seen and not heard and I am merely a child in this organization. At the same time I believe under modern conditions children are being more and more heard and the older people are being put more and more in the background. So I am going to take the liberty of making a few remarks particularly with reference to the president's address. This is my first attendance at a meeting of the Northern Nut Growers' Association and I have profited very greatly by it. I have become very much interested in nut culture. In a small way I am stumbling along and learning something of the work and the development of this industry. At present it is merely a fad with me but I do not know but what it may become something more as I get into it. I have been particularly impressed this morning with the address of the president. There were one or two suggestions that he makes that I wish to refer to. I think it is an excellent suggestion to get the children interested in nut culture through historical nut trees if nuts can be secured from such trees and delivered to different school authorities.

Another is the question of having a representative from every state. I would like to inquire from the secretary if some such provision has been adopted.

The Acting Secretary: We have always had a list of state vice-presidents which you will find in each one of the reports. Those state vice-presidents have been selected because of their being the most active members in each particular state but they have never been especially active more than to turn in some communication about their work. I have never been able to get any of them to make any special campaign for new members.

Mr. Foster: Then, as I understand it, the president's idea is to urge these vice-presidents to take a more active interest in the affairs of the association.

The President: That is the point I desire to make.

Mr. Morris: When the constitution of the United States was drawn up it was said to be "insanely ideal." We do not have to stretch our imaginations this morning to the point of a question of our sanity when our president's compositions are put before us. His paper seems sanely ideal. There is only one thing that interests a child more than history, (unless it is Sunday school), and that is a dollar bill. Now if we are going to approach the children let us introduce the pragmatic side of giving the child an object lesson showing where the planting of a nut tree will bring a return in dollar bills that will ripen along with the leaves every autumn instead of just leaves alone. We should have in connection with various educational institutions a few object lesson trees. It seems to me that this is a responsibility of the state. A number of responsibilities have been put upon the state in the past and a number of responsibilities have been put upon the educational department in every state. So many of them, in fact, that hardly any legislature will stand without hitching when there is a question of diversion of "pork barrel" funds away from river and harbor appropriations toward education. We can show that very much larger river and harbor requirements will follow if our children raise so much of this great new feed supply that we have more things to transport. The question may be taken almost seriously from that point. In fact if you give further consideration to the matter it seems to me that this statement of mine, made somewhat in the spirit of levity, is like many other statements made in the spirit of levity. It has a basis in real fact. The development of that basis I will leave to your imagination.

Mr. McGlennon: In regard to Dr. Morris' remarks relative to the financial consideration, that appeals to me with peculiar force and I think we can very materially provide for it in an enlarged membership. For some time I have been giving very serious thought to the subject of enlarging the membership of the Northern Nut Growers Association. I think quite a substantial gain was made last year and I believe that a very large gain can be made this year. I think we ought to have a membership in the neighborhood of a thousand anyway. I believe we can increase it this year to at least 500. Probably I am particularly fortunate in having a source of supply of membership that perhaps the rest of the members have not, through the L. W. Hall Company. This company is handling our improved filberts and is getting a large number of orders and the people who have received plants during the past couple of years seem to be very much pleased with them. In many instances they have already borne fruit. The Hall company has received splendid letters in regard to them. In the fall and in the spring the Hall company sends out a large number of catalogues. This fall they will send something like a thousand, in the spring from five to seven thousand and in each of these catalogues the literature of the Northern Nut Growers Association can be included. We experimented a little last year along this line and I believe Mr. Bixby will bear me out in saying that there was quite a tangible response. I got a few members in and about Rochester through friends but I believe that I can almost guarantee at least a hundred members myself this year and probably more, particularly through the medium of the Hall agency. But, as Dr. Morris says, or practically said, there is nothing in this world that talks louder than a dollar so I thought I would come here prepared to back up my position and to guarantee at least 25 members for this year.

There is another matter to which I think we ought to give serious consideration and that is the matter of the American Nut Journal. It is the only nut journal, as I understand, in the country and I believe there is an inestimable future for it if we seize our opportunity or enable Mr. Olcott to seize his. At this time, I believe, he is not getting the support that he ought to have from this Association and the other nut associations of the country. He is a very able man, at one time the editor of the Post Express in Rochester, the classiest paper in Rochester, and we have some classy ones there, he is an educated man of large experience and very versatile and it seems to me he ought to have substantial support. So I came here with a certified check for 25 memberships to the association and 25 subscriptions to the American Nut Journal as a guarantee of good faith. I believe I can add 75 more.

There are some other things that I think we ought to give consideration to and that is the work that is being done by Dr. Deming and Mr. Bixby. I think these men should have special and substantial support, real support, money support, so that they can do things as they ought to be done at the time they ought to be done. I think we are selfish in asking these men to give so much of their time and attention and money to the affairs of this association without giving them better support. If we have more members we will have more money and more members will bring more members. This propaganda will be spread far and wide. The interest in nut culture is growing by leaps and bounds. I think this is the time to strike as a scientific organization. I think the Northern Nut Growers' Association is the most scientific of all of the nut growing associations. That is something of a guess, of course, but if they were put to the test I believe it would come out on top. Anyway put me down for the very best efforts that I can render to the end of building up membership and financial support of this association. It seems to me that with men like Deming, Bixby, Morris, Littlepage, and others whom I could mention, the scientific and practical ends of this association are being pretty well taken care of. We meet here in association and it is very lovely, something of a mutual admiration society; we go away and are likely to forget until it is about time to get busy with another meeting. Now it seems to me we ought to be busy all the year doing something so that when we come to the meeting like this we have something to report in the way of membership and money. That will make possible these plans that Dr. Morris suggested. I was unable to hear the president's address but it seems to me that more attention should be given to the matter of finances of this association and the membership.

I just want to add a remark or two in regard to Mr. Vollertsen who is going to read a paper on the filbert. We have found, and we certainly believe, he and I,—and he knows more than I do because he is on the ground all the time—I look after the sales end of it,—we have found that several of our smaller varieties of nuts are, in our estimation, decidedly superior to some of the larger varieties. While we believe that the consumer is going to give first thought to size he will be making a mistake if he passes by some of our smaller varieties which are splendidly filled, filled to capacity, very rich, and thin-shelled. I do not want the smaller varieties passed by.

Mr. Jones: I think the nurseries would be glad to co-operate in the getting of new members and it has occurred to me that they might like to donate trees to new members or plants or something that would attract them. That might be worked up with the secretary if it would be any great attraction for getting new members.

The President: I think that is a very good suggestion.

The Secretary-Treasurer: Mr. McGlennon spoke of the amount of time that the secretary had to give to the work. I can speak from experience and I can speak frankly because the secretary and the treasurer are different persons, although the office of the secretary treasurer has not yet been officially divided. The treasurer is supposed to have not much to do and the secretary to get the bulk of the work. While the finances of the association at the present time are not such that we can recommend the paying of a salary to the secretary, yet there should be a salary paid to the secretary sufficient so that he could employ someone to relieve him of a good portion of the detail which comes on him. I know by experience what that is. I would like to ask the association to authorize the treasurer to pay the secretary a salary not exceeding $500 a year. That is what it ought to be or whatever portion of that the finances will permit for this purpose. In offering that I do not want the secretary to think that he must begin to spend the money right away, because it is not in the treasury, but I have a lot of faith that we will get more money and will be enabled to pay that. So I want to ask your authority to do it.

Mr. Olcott: I would like to second that motion and also to endorse what Mr. McGlennon said, and Mr. Jones, in regard to new members. I think that is one of the things we need as much as anything right now and that we can get them if we go after them. I know that our secretaries, both Mr. Bixby and Dr. Deming, have done a great deal of work and that it takes a great deal of work to get new members. There are a good many other things on the schedule for the treasurer and secretary to do besides that. We have a system of vice-presidents for each state and one of my recent ideas has been that he might form the center for an increase of membership in his particular state through co-operation with the secretary of this association. If we do not keep after this matter after we adjourn we shall be just about where we are now a year from now. It is activity that counts. I am sure that if we provide for a salary for the secretary we will get busy and provide for that salary, so I make the motion that the treasurer be authorised to pay $500, or any portion of that amount that the association can afford, to the secretary.

Dr. Morris: I second the motion.

The motion was carried unanimously.

The Acting Secretary: You will notice that, in the question box, question number 12 is in relation to roadside planting of nut trees. More people, it seems to me, are interested in the roadside planting of nut trees than in any other one phase of nut planting. I get many questions about what is desirable to plant on the roadsides and many suggestions that the Association particularly interest itself in encouraging roadside nut planting. Therefore it seems to me that it would be advisable that this association should appoint a committee which should consider all the factors concerned in roadside planting of nut trees, and should draw up a bulletin which can be sent out to officials and people who make inquiry and to all people who are interested, giving them exact and specific information on the subject of road planting in each state, considering each state separately and suggesting what nut trees had best be planted in that particular state.

Mr. Jones: I think Dr. Deming's suggestion is a good one but I do not like the idea of waiting another year. I think we ought to do that right now. There is a big opportunity for producing new varieties. For instance, get each state to take up planting of the very best nuts they can get and then plant the seedlings on the roadside and we will get new varieties that will be better than anything we have now. If you plant common nuts you will get common nuts but if you plant fine nuts while you will still get a large number of ordinary nuts you will get some that will be fine and some that will be better than anything you plant, if you plant enough of them. I think that is the greatest opportunity we have in roadside planting.

The Acting Secretary: I think this is the proper course to follow, that the committee appointed should have power to issue a bulletin without waiting for the next convention. I would like to see our president at the head of the committee.

Mr. Jones: I would like to see them get the nuts this year. There is a good crop of nuts this year, black walnuts, hickory and other nuts.

The Acting Secretary: I move that a committee be appointed by the president, the number to be determined by the president, and our president, Mr. Linton, to be the chairman of the committee, to consider the compilation and issue of a bulletin on roadside planting of nut trees.

Mr. Bixby: I second the motion.

The motion was carried unanimously.

Mr. Pomeroy: You will find this argument probably will be used by some that the trees will be destroyed by automobile parties and children hammering the nuts off with sticks and stones. I have a few nut trees planted along the roadside now that are in bearing. They have been in bearing, some of them, six or eight years and they are within forty feet of a school house with a large attendance of children. I have had no trouble at all with the children gathering the nuts or tampering with the trees. Of course they take a few—I would take them if I were in their place,—but none of any consequence. Automobile parties passing along there seldom bother them—although they are worse than the children to tell the truth. You will hear that argument, that a food producing tree along the roadside will be injured by travelers.

Dr. Morris: Mr. Pomeroy's remark relates either to one of two things, to bad nuts or good children. We will not have that feature throughout the country at large. It is an important point, however, but if this is to be committee work it seems to me that perhaps Mr. Pomeroy and others might offer their testimony at the time there is a committee meeting for bulletin purposes and we ought not to go on with this discussion at this time.

The President: The next thing on the program is an address by Dr. William A. Taylor, Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, on "The Place of Nut Trees in our Northern Horticulture."

THE PLACE OF NUT TREES IN OUR NORTHERN HORTICULTURE

Wm. A. Taylor, Washington, D. C.

We are somewhat inclined in America to consider none but the big things worth while.

We like to do the big things and the quick ones. To organize billion dollar corporations; grow billion bushel wheat crops; to have the swiftest motor boat or auto; to receive the largest income per man, per year, or per acre. Concentrating our attention on cap sheaves and superlatives rather generally we very easily lose sight of features less conspicuous though highly important.

Such an one is the rational development of nut culture in our Northern States. Since the scouring of our chestnut forests by the Asiatic chestnut blight has practically eliminated that nut from consideration for orchard planting in the infected territory until resistant varieties yielding good crops of nuts of acceptable quality are obtained or developed, we can hardly say with assurance that we have any nut of proved adaptability in sight which is worthy of planting on an extensive scale for its crop alone, on productive agricultural land in the Northern States.

Along the southern fringe of "the North" as in Delaware, Maryland, southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri exception in favor of the hardy varieties of pecans should probably be noted but in the light of present knowledge orchard planting of the commercially important almond, Persian walnut, and pecan must be left to the Pacific Coast and in the South.

This fact has been so generally recognized that we have been inclined to give up all thought of attempting nut production in the North merely because large scale operation is not attractive. There is much ground for belief that this view is erroneous and that there is need for localized planting.

If the world war taught any economic lesson to civilized men which they should remember and act on, it is that low cost food reserves should be provided against possible exigencies. They are not needed every year but when needed their value can hardly be estimated. Only to a limited extent can such reserves be accumulated out of the production of our ordinary cereals and commonly cultivated crops. Potential reserves in the form of fruitful nut trees can be established at relative light initial investment or of continuing care and labor on almost every farm and by many a roadside in much of our farming territory. Black walnut, butternut, shag bark, shell bark, beech and other hardy, long-lived native trees can be established at low cost in large numbers for beauty, shade, and food production. Nor should the possibilities of Persian walnut, Japanese walnut, and native hazel be disregarded in favored sections.

While none of these are entirely free from plant diseases or insect pests, they are, when once established, capable of maintaining themselves fairly clean and sound with little expenditure for spraying or other attention during the growing season when the peak load activities of the farm are on. Why should not their planting receive more attention and encouragement from our horticultural and other rural societies? For rough land and roadside planting they are decidedly more practical in most sections than any of our fruit trees, substantially all of which require spraying and tillage to maintain productiveness, or in fact to avoid becoming nuisances by harboring pests to contaminate the commercial orchards of the neighborhoods. While much has been said in America in commendation of the roadside planting of fruit trees so common in portions of Europe, and while there are possibilities of useful development along this line, most American efforts in this direction have proved disappointing because of the impracticability of giving the trees the care and attention they require. While often promising at the start they have quickly become infested with San Jose and other scales, borers, blights and rots which can only be prevented or controlled by systematic and thorough remedial measures, rarely possible on rough lands, in fence rows and on roadsides.

If this type of nut culture is sufficiently promising to be worth while, do we not need to attack its problems from a somewhat different angle than has become our custom with the trees which are to be grown under intensive cultural conditions at high maintenance cost, such as more and more characterizes our orcharding?

It has seemed to me for some time that in this field we need to return in our study of varieties and strains of nut trees to the standards and ideals of the earlier and ruder period of American Pomology when rusticity of tree, including storm endurance, freedom from troublesome diseases and insect pests, as well as productiveness and dessert quality were the primary consideration next after satisfactory productiveness and quality of crop.

This and other like societies might well devote much effort to the securing of performance records of promising individual nut trees, whether wild or grown by man, with a view to locating those which, whether bearing nuts of the largest size and finest quality or not, possess the inherent ability to bear regular crops of fair quality under the rough and humble conditions of the average fence row or roadside of the region to which they are adapted. Can a more alluring and fascinating field for search throughout the growing season be suggested or one more likely to interest the growing army of nature lovers, whether dwellers in country or town?

Once located and proved worth while through a sufficient period of cropping such trees, especially of black walnut, could be made available through nursery propagation for rapid dissemination for experimental planting throughout the areas of their probable adaptability.