Chapter II: Part 2

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

MR. BARTLETT: I would like to know what the chief characteristics of the blight are.

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

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

THE SECRETARY: Would those nuts be ruined?

MR. JONES: Some of them would be and some of them not.

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

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

NOTES ON THE NUT BEARING PINES AND ALLIED CONIFERS.

DR. ROBERT T. MORRIS, NEW YORK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUESTION: At what age will they bear?

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

QUESTION: Would it be possible to produce grafted trees?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DR. MORRIS CONDUCTING THE PARTY.

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

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

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

(4) Carolina hickory. Grafted on native shagbark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(61) A thrifty young Chinese seedling persimmon (_Diospyros lotus_).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

DR. J. H. KELLOGG, MICHIGAN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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