Chapter IV: Part 4

MR. R. L. MCCOY: Mr. President, some mighty strange things happen with grafted and budded English walnuts, and I believe I could ask questions that would puzzle a school of wise men. Now, none of the answers here will stand up very well. For instance, Mr. Jones says this dieing back is due to late grafting. Well, I had some Holdens that we budded this last June a year ago, that suddenly, all at once, along in July this year, proceeded to quit business, and quit clear down, and the root died, too, the black walnut root. It is a serious question in my mind whether the black is the best stock to be used or not. Mr. Jones and Mr. Reed have good success grafting the English on the black. We don't down our way. Both of those men are in regions where the land is inclined to be alkali. The land where my orchard is, and where Mr. Littlepage's and Mr. Wilkinson's orchards are, is inclined to be acid. I am of the opinion that, to make a success of the English walnut, we are going to have to use lime, and use it extensively, not only in the nursery, but until the time when the trees begin to bear.

THE PRESIDENT: It is one of the common pieces of knowledge of all the agriculturists of France that the walnut does well on lime soils, and they don't expect it to do well on acid soils.

MR. JONES: Mr. President, I think, if Mr. McCoy will examine his trees, he will find that the root dies first.

MR. MCCOY: Well, why should they rot?

MR. JONES: That is like a good many other things, Mr. McCoy. We don't know why.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: A pecan top-worked on a water hickory will sometimes kill the whole tree, top and all. It is the top that does it.

MR. M. P. REED: This year we made some observations of different varieties, as to time of leafing out, and we found the Eastern varieties leafed out about the first of April, and the Franquette and Mayette about the fifth of May, and one variety we got from the Department, No. 39,884, didn't leaf out until the twenty-fifth of May. That seemed to indicate that the French varieties were going to prove better than the Eastern varieties, because late frosts cannot hurt the blossoms.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: That is correct. I watched them this spring at Mr. McCoy's. Franquette and Mayette, over there and with us, were anywhere from ten days to two weeks later leafing out. Some of the buds were entirely dormant and some just bursting when many of our Eastern varieties were in full leaf. But my experience here in Maryland on walnut trees from all sections was that every one winter-killed except one Nebo tree and a top-worked Potomac. I have a Potomac which has made ten to twelve feet of growth, and it didn't winter-kill the slightest, and my Nebo tree hasn't winter-killed any, but the Franquette, the Meylan, the Rush, the Holden, and several others winter-killed very badly. At least, Mr. McMurran said that was what it was, and I thought it was, too.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mr. Littlepage, isn't "winter-killing" rather a relative term, dependent partly upon the climate and partly upon the condition of the tree at the end of the growing season? Was there anything back of your statement, any late growing, or something of that sort?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Well, they didn't grow any later than the Potomac grew, but that tree was top-worked about five or six feet above the ground and I think that makes them hardier.

A MEMBER: Were the winter-killed trees cultivated late?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes; and fertilized heavily.

THE PRESIDENT: Haven't you answered your own question?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Well, I won't grow trees if they do not grow better than that.

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Littlepage may think he has answered this question, and these other gentlemen may think they have answered it in a different way, but there are some rather peculiar phenomena there. I don't question the sincerity of these gentlemen, but I don't think they have answered the question. Whenever you transplant these trees and whenever you get to growing them in big quantities, you will have certain peculiar phenomena that you are not certain at first as to just what is the cause. Mr. White is just as near right when he says they kill in July as Mr. Littlepage when he says they winter-kill in December. And I will just say to people who buy walnut trees from our firm that when they transplant them under the same conditions as Mr. Littlepage, they may expect similar results.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I have never seen a northern pecan winter-kill.

MR. MCCOY: Oh, I have.

MR. MCMURRAN: Mr. President, this term "winter-killing" is a little bit misleading, and it has been a matter of discussion in the National Nut Growers' Association for several years and a great loss to many Southern pecan growers. A very common statement that one hears down there is "Why, our trees don't winter-kill. We don't have cold severe enough to kill them." But they do. It isn't a question of severity of cold, but suddenness of change. For instance, in southern Georgia one year, we had a rainy period in October; about November 20th there was a hard freeze. A number of orchards which had been fertilized late in the fall were almost wiped out. If it were not due to the fact that the term is too long, and we could say "damage due to sudden temperature change," it would convey the idea exactly. I saw trees injured in the fall of 1914 that didn't die until September of the following year, and I have a number of photographs in my office.

DR. STABLER: I believe, Mr. President, that the stimulation of growth late in the season has a great deal to do with the winter-killing of trees and other plants. I have noticed it in clover and alfalfa, and I have noticed it in peach trees.

THE PRESIDENT: I think Dr. Stabler has stated a very well-known principle, not only of horticulture, but also of agriculture. Last year we questioned Mr. W. C. Reed as to the condition of a certain top-worked, heavily forced, black-walnut we had seen the year before at Vincennes. We were confirmed in our belief that the tree was dead, but that another tree budded at the same time with the same bud-wood and not forced, lived. We had a dry summer that year, a wet fall, twenty degrees below zero at Christmas, dead apple trees. I suspect that Mr. Littlepage has a problem in the balance of tillage and top-working.

DR. STABLER: I think if he visits his neighbor, Professor Waite, he will find out how to manage trees so they won't winter-kill, because he knows how to fix it. (Laughter.)

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I treated the trees just like the pecan. I have never seen it possible yet to over-stimulate a pecan and winter-kill it. I don't say it isn't possible, but I have never seen it.

THE PRESIDENT: I can show you a few.

MR. M. P. REED: Mr. President, we have that condition in the nursery row.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Well, those are grafted, are they not?

MR. M. P. REED: Grafts and buds, both.

DR. MORRIS: In regard to the grafting of the Persian walnut upon black walnut stock. In Connecticut, we have three species of mice--the common field mouse, the pine mouse, and the white-footed mouse. These mice all follow in the holes of the moles, and they are very fond of the bark of the Persian walnut, and will destroy a good many of them. Now, with the black walnut, on the other hand, when one of these mice comes along and takes a bite of that, he shuts one eye, cleans his teeth, and then goes on to something else. (Laughter.)

Now, in our country the soil is practically all acid. The black walnut will grow in pretty acid soil. The Persian walnut almost demands a neutral or alkaline soil. So, for Connecticut there is no doubt that we really need the black walnut stock for the Persian walnut.

THE PRESIDENT: Any further problems that are vexing the orchardist with regard to the Persian walnut? If not, I think this is a suitable time to bury it until next year. Col. Van Duzee, a man who has had more experience with the pecan than almost any one else in the room, has kindly consented to make his contribution at this time. Col. Van Duzee.

COL. VAN DUZEE: There is a longing on the part of a large percentage of men and women that I meet to escape from conditions which do not seem to be especially favorable in the large cities, and to get away into the safety of the country. I believe that nut tree growing offers one of the safest of those outlets. I believe that a nut orchard should be a part of a general farming operation. I want to give you my ideas about inter-crops. Fifteen years ago the doctors gave me three months to live, drove me out of my business, and away from my home to prolong the agony for a few weeks or months, and I found, among my orchard trees, a reasonable amount of health which, to me, repays a greater value than I could reckon in dollars and cents. It has given me the privilege and the opportunity of removing myself from the turmoil of the city and the conflict of the business world to a peaceful, quiet existence, that, to me, is very much more satisfactory. Now, that is an inter-crop.

Down in Florida, when we used to get together in our citrus seminars and in our horticultural and agricultural meetings we used to try and make a man say on what class of soil his home or orchard was located, so that we might get his viewpoint. For the successful nut orchardist, in a small way, must, of necessity, be a successful agriculturist. He must understand soils. You can't have successful inter-cropping without understanding soils, and, therefore, I can't tell you definitely what would be good for your northern soils. But I can tell you this, that the first thing to do when you have an orchard problem to consider is to make an exhaustive survey of the character of the soil. If it is a fresh, recently cleared piece of fertile soil, under favorable conditions, I am satisfied you don't need very much in the way of inter-cropping. On the other hand, if you select for your orchard site a piece of land that has been worked to death, I believe it would be well to inaugurate a system of inter-cropping that would have for its object the building up of that soil and the improvement of the environment for the roots of those trees. In the South, we are favored with twelve months of growing weather. We plant our crops throughout the year. I am just about beginning now to plow for my oat planting. I am going to pasture those oats all winter with hogs and cattle. We will harvest our oats in May. We then follow them with a legume which will restore the fertility to that soil. In the present condition of the market for commercial fertilizers, I believe we have gone beyond the point where any man can afford to use commercial fertilizers to any great extent on ordinary crops. I believe it is possible to go too far in the stimulation of a growing orchard. My opinion is that a series of inter-crops that results eventually in a large deposit of nitrogen, such as we get from several leguminous crops plowed under, will have a tendency to bring that orchard into a condition--I am speaking now, you understand, of the pecan---where it will be susceptible to disease and winter-killing.

If you have followed me as far as I have gone in this, you will begin to see at once that the men who are going to be successful in solving these problems are the men who are going to learn the game. Among the human family, you know, we have a stock phrase that we use sometimes when a man dies and we don't understand the cause of his death. We say "He died of heart failure." That is a convenient thing to hide behind. "Winter-killing," to my mind, is another such term. It is used, for instance, in a case where an individual tree, for some reason or other not quite understood, "passed away." (Laughter.)

I have been fifteen years in the growing of pecan trees in the South, and I am free to confess that the most disturbing element in my life at the present time is the fact that we "have known so many things that weren't true." We have gone ahead fully believing that our course was justified, that it was well digested, desirable in every way, and suddenly waked up to find that we were radically wrong, or, at least, that there was a very open question as to whether we were not absolutely wrong.

To the person of limited means the idea of being able to produce a nut orchard at very little expense is very attractive, and my heart goes out to people in that condition because I have been in that condition myself and passed through it. Ten years ago I bought a piece of land for forty dollars an acre, and planted seventeen pecan trees on each acre. It cost me twenty-five dollars an acre to lay off the land, dig the holes, and plant the trees nicely, with about a half pound of bone meal mixed in the soil in each hole. I carried that nut orchard on, using some inter-crops, up to one year ago, when it finished its eighth year of growth, and, without burdening you with the minute figures, I am going to say we have sixty-five dollars charged up to it, and it will take $185 more. Now, there is $250, if I haven't made any mistake. I planted among those trees nursery stock, and I sold off, during the time that those trees were growing, nursery stock to the value of, we will say, $250, making my inter-crops pay the expense of cultivation and interest on the investment up to that time. So don't forget that. Now, this is a case where we are going to balance our books, as every business man does, and every farmer ought to. I have, up to the time those trees were eight years of age, invested approximately $250, and have received back not only that, but the interest on the investment. So, at eight years of age the orchard cost me nothing. Now, that would be the way a great many people would figure that proposition. I can't do it that way. I am going to charge that orchard with $250 an acre for supervision. Now, above that line (indicating on black-board) it looks as though that orchard had been built up for nothing, and below the line you see a debit of $250 charged against that orchard. There is not one man in a hundred that contemplates a proposition of this kind that is willing to charge his orchard up with the gray matter that he puts into it. But there was an inter-crop in that orchard, of health and satisfaction, which is worth more to me than my services, so I will put that in here as $250. (Laughter and applause.) Now, I walked across this morning--I like to walk, and I came across the park. I saw a monument right over here in a little iron circular enclosure, erected in honor of Andrew Jackson Donald, a man who died several years ago, the man who was partly responsible for the magnificent landscape gardening effect of which this building is a part. It said on the monument this: "His life was devoted to the improvement of the national taste in rural art." Down below it said: "His mind was singularly just, penetrating and original." Any man ought to be proud to have that sort of thing engraved upon his monument, and, gentlemen, any man who will go out and plant nut trees like those you saw this afternoon, ought to have a monument under those trees expressing sentiments similar to these, because he has done something which remains after him, and it is one of the most worth-while things that any human being can do. That is one of the other valuable things about a nut orchard.

Now, this nut orchard--this is no myth--this is a practical proposition. I was practically bankrupt when I went there. It is paying now in a small way, and will pay more later on, and I am going to leave it to my children as one of the safest and sanest investments that I could leave them, and I want to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the consciousness of possessing something of that sort, which can't be stolen, can't run away, is another inter-crop that is grown among those trees.

I sometimes tell a story of a little two-horse farm down in the South. I drove fourteen miles out into the wilderness to find some seed nuts to plant this nursery with years ago. I found there an old home which was the central home of a large plantation in days gone by, and there were half a dozen--perhaps seven or eight--magnificent, great pecan trees about the lot, and a vegetable garden at the back of the home. Those trees were loaded with nuts. There was a young man there--one of the most pitiful things that I ever saw in my life--a fine young man--magnificent character, and recently married, making his home in this old tumble-down house, making his start in the world there. He didn't own this land--rented this fifty or sixty acres of open land, and these trees went with the two-horse farm. I said, "My friend, you must receive quite a little income from those nuts." "Yes," he said, "I sell the nuts from those trees every year, for more money than I make from the two-horse farm."

I heard of another case down in north Florida where two girls were left absolutely dependent upon their own exertions, and they were girls who had been reared, as some of the Southern ladies have been reared, to be dependent on others. They didn't know how to go and fight the world for a place. They were a little too far along, perhaps, to take up that sort of battle. There were two pecan trees in front of that old homestead, and the old homestead was all that was left of the family fortune. It was furnished, had a cow in the back yard, and a garden, and a few Scuppernong grape vines. These two pecan trees in the front yard gave those two women approximately three hundred dollars worth of nuts per annum. They were magnificent, great, big pecan trees, and they lived from them the balance of their lives practically, with the help of the other things I have mentioned.

Inter-crops are nothing more nor less than the evidences of the master mind directing the problem of handling the soil in which the orchard is growing. Now, just simply go right down deep under everything, pay absolutely no attention to the wonderful stories that the promoters tell you (laughter), keep your money, save it, use it, and spend it--yes, but recognize this one thing, that the most important element in success in the small orchard, as part of the rural or suburban home, is a knowledge of agriculture and horticulture. It is one of the most fascinating studies in the world, and I have no doubt but what you will find that you can go right along inter-cropping with vegetables and other crops, bush fruits, strawberries, and all those things for the first few years after you plant your nut trees, and even if they all die you will have been able to break even on the commercial side of the proposition, and then you will have the additional years of experience, which no nut orchardist can dispense with. You can't buy it with money or get it out of books. You have got to dig it out of the ground yourself. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: I am going to take the liberty of emphasizing one point the Colonel made. He told you about the great number of things they knew down South that were not so. I wish to give some geographical spread to his generalities. We are in the same condition in the North. If you will stop and look clear through an agricultural idea, you will be astonished, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely astonished, to see how, mostly, we don't know it. The other day I happened to be walking through an apple orchard with the official horticulturist, and in response to some remark he made I asked: "Do you know that, or do you think it?" "Has that been experimentally proven?" He answered: "No, it has not." Most of the things we read in the books and hear in this place and other places we don't know. We think we know, but when we come to a show-down we really haven't got experimental data. I know of no people to whom that thing needs to be emphasized more than to the Northern Nut Growers' Association.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH, AT 10.30 A. M.

Meeting called to order by the President.

THE PRESIDENT: The first order of business, I believe, will be the report of the Nominating Committee.

THE SECRETARY: The report of the Nominating Committee is the following: For President, W. C. Reed, Vincennes, Indiana; Vice-President, W. N. Hutt, Raleigh, North Carolina; Secretary-Treasurer, Dr. W. C. Deming, Georgetown, Connecticut.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, I move that the report of this Nominating Committee be accepted and adopted, and these officers declared elected.

THE PRESIDENT: Do I hear a second?

A MEMBER: Second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: The nomination of this list is moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? If not, all those in favor will say "aye;" opposed, like sign, it is carried, and they are elected.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: While I am on the floor, I want to read a resolution which I have drafted, and I will read the clauses separately:

"Owing to the fatal character, the unchecked and rapid spread of the chestnut blight," is there any question about that? If that is not true, let somebody hold up his hand.

"Owing to the fact that it has been widely disseminated through the shipment of nursery stock;" is that correct?

"Owing to the fact that in the first stages the disease cannot be easily detected;" is that true?

"Owing to the fact that the young trees apparently have a temporary immunity from the disease;"

"Therefore, the Northern Nut Growers' Association believes that the continued free shipment of chestnut nursery stock will be productive of endless destruction of property in those places where the chestnut trees haven't yet the disease." If that is unsound, why, somebody say so.

"Therefore, be it resolved, that we, the Northern Nut Growers' Association, suggest that the Secretary of Agriculture prohibit the shipment of chestnut nursery stock, except in the localities known to have the blight, and that with each permit for shipment shall go a bulletin or circular giving the important facts about the chestnut blight. The only exception to this regulation shall be the shipments for experimental purposes, and such shipments must have the above mentioned permit, and the name of the nursery from which such trees have come, and must be inspected by Federal inspectors." I assume, of course, that inspection is a general inspection. I don't mean each particular shipment. If there are any questions about that, why, I will let the chair answer them.

DR. ULMAN: Mr. Littlepage, I would like to ask a question, or, rather, offer a criticism. If I understand you rightly, you say, "except in the districts where blight is prevalent." As a matter of fact, sir, the particular nursery that advertises the chestnut tree works within a radius of possibly 250 miles of Rochester, in a district where there are many prospective horticulturists. One of the things that impressed me more than anything else in the report of the Secretary was the fact that we have lost a large number of members, and that we haven't attracted to ourselves many new members. So far as my personal experience goes, if I were to choose the one method of being most thoroughly disliked, it would be to ask my neighbors, particularly those who do not know me, to become members of any kind of a nut association. There is a glamour about planting, and it is a sort of a disease with some people, year after year, to seek for novelties. These nut tree advertisements that read so well attract many purchasers. Right here in this section people are buying nut trees that they are going to plant in a blighted district, and these people, when they see what utter failures they have, will be so disgusted with nut growing that when you approach them you cannot talk nuts to them, and you will never have them join the Association. More and more are leaving the Association, and very few new ones are coming in to take their places. So I think the resolution ought to be changed.

THE PRESIDENT: In what respect would you have it changed?

DR. ULMAN: To apply generally.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes. Well, I agree very largely with what the doctor says. I have always felt that the success of this organization--the success of the nut industry as a whole--depended upon its being upon an entirely truthful, fair and honest basis. I would rather see a crooked cashier in a bank than a crooked nurseryman or tree man. The cashier you can check up at 4:30 every afternoon; you can't check up the crooked tree man for about ten years. I think the worst of all discouraging things to people who want to go to the country to build up farms and homes is to run into alluring, but misleading, advertisements. I have an abounding faith in tree culture. I think that the pecan tree, the black walnut, varieties of the English walnut and of a number of other nut trees, are going to make it most possible and more desirable for men to go to the country, but I think the success of those things depends upon giving those people, as far as possible, facts, and not misleading them. Wherever a man sets a tree that is a failure you have a man as a failure generally as a tree man, and wherever you get a man to set a tree that succeeds, you have a living, walking advocate of the tree business. This Association has been fortunate all along in its policies. It has always stood against the fraudulent promotions; it has always stood against fraudulent nursery stock; it has always stood against fraudulent representations, and I think, for that reason, that its future is reasonably safe, assuming that is its continued policy.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you accept Dr. Ulman's amendment?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I accept it.

MR. JONES: As I understand the resolution, it applies to nurseries in the infected areas.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes.

MR. JONES: I believe it is practically impossible to grow trees in an infected area without sending out the blight, but if a man is isolated, like Mr. Riehl, at Alton, Illinois, he can grow trees without danger of sending out the blight.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the resolution permits him to do that.

MR. M. P. REED: Did I understand Mr. Kellerman to say the Department hasn't authority to quarantine against such things?

THE PRESIDENT: No. The point brought up was the theory that lay back of the quarantine. The speaker made the point that shipment of infected trees was killing the tree aspirations of the people who ought to be developing the nut industry. Every time a man buys a chestnut tree and it dies with blight that man is chilled out of business. Now this resolution doesn't cover that man. It is based on the ground of injury to the industry. You can't very well define the limits of where the blight is not, but it can be fairly well defined as to where it is, and that is up to the Department.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: The resolutions are offered in a suggestive way, Mr. President. If the Secretary wants to turn the suggestion down, we will meet again next year any way.

PROF. CLOSE: I would like some information as to how you propose to take this matter up with the Department. I was present a year or so ago at a hearing before the Federal Horticultural Board--I don't know whether any one else present was there at the time--but the whole thing hinged largely on Colonel Sober's attitude in propagating and sending out the Paragon chestnut, and I think the Department--the Federal Horticultural Board--originated the question that you are discussing now, and Colonel Sober came there with a whole lot of pretty good information, and people to back up what he said, and the Department put up a mighty poor show, I tell you. I was ashamed of what the Department men had to say, and Colonel Sober won out hands down. Now, if this question comes up again, it will be referred, no doubt, to the Federal Horticultural Board, and you will need a good, strong representation, with plenty of facts back of you, and if you can put up a strong enough case there is no doubt but what you can establish this quarantine. But I would hate to see the question taken up again and floored as easily as it was at that time.

THE PRESIDENT: Prof. Close, I have read part of the testimony.--I was not present at the meeting--and when one considers the number of things that were said at that meeting that are not so, and the amount of other evidence that has come up since, I think the defenders of the public will have the material to make a much stronger presentation than they did then, and, what is more, I think some of them will be there. Of course, when a man has a possibility of getting a quarter of a million dollars out of a lot of junk, he can spend money to hire people to say things, and when "the dear public" is paying nobody to go, as was the case last time, nobody goes. If that hearing comes again, I think some from this Association will be present.

PROF. CLOSE: That is just the point I want to bring up. You have got to be there with the information.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I just want to say a word, rather endorsing what Professor Close has had to say. The Department of Agriculture, the quarantine board, or anybody else, can't go out of their limitations and get testimony. If we think there ought to be a quarantine, then, whenever there is a public invitation sent out, such as was sent out before, we ought to have the nerve to go down there before the Department officials and tell them the truth. It is very easy for us to stand up here and write papers and articles criticising the quarantine board and the Department of Agriculture. If we have anything to say about these things we ought to go down there and say it. If other people come there and present facts as a matter of record, the Board can't entirely go outside of those facts and decide a case right out of the clear sky. If this organization wants to be effective, it ought to appoint a committee to present those things before that Board.

Resolution adopted.

THE SECRETARY: I have had in mind some time the idea involved in this resolution, which I have hastily drawn up.

"Since the principles underlying the successful and economical propagation of nut trees are not yet thoroughly understood or generally known, and much effort is being wasted and much disappointment incurred in unsuccessful or partially successful efforts in propagation.

"Resolved, that it is the sense of this meeting that systematic and controlled experiments be made, under the direction of the Department of Agriculture, for the purpose of determining the principles underlying the successful propagation of nut trees in all sections of the country."

DR. ULMAN: Second that motion. (Carried.)

MR. C. A. REED: I would like to present an invitation to meet at Battle Creek.

MR. ROPER: Petersburg invites us to meet at Petersburg.

THE PRESIDENT: Those matters are settled by the Executive Committee.

MR. T. P. LITTLEPAGE: Would it not be well, Mr. President, to determine upon a meeting place now, and let it be known, so that everybody can prepare for it? Being a member of the Executive Committee, I would prefer myself that the Association take the responsibility for deciding the meeting place. If these meeting places are selected in advance, it makes it possible for a good many people to plan their vacation trips to fit in. In order to get the matter before the Association, I move that the Society determine right now the next meeting place. (Seconded.)

MR. OLCOTT: I think Mr. Littlepage's motion is of more than ordinary importance. The Association, heretofore, has left that matter, very properly, perhaps, to the Executive Committee. The result is that little or no attention is given to the place of meeting until thirty or ninety days before the date of that meeting. It would be very much better if we knew several months ahead about the meeting, and I think we would have a larger attendance and more enthusiasm. The American Association of Nurserymen names the date at the time of their meeting for the following meeting, and most other organizations do the same, and the results are quite perceptible.

(Motion carried.)

THE SECRETARY: We have an invitation from the Evansville Chamber of Commerce, one from the San Francisco Convention League, to meet at San Francisco, one from Sears, Roebuck & Company, to meet in Chicago, and enjoy a luncheon at their expense and a trip through their plant; one from Dr. Morris to meet at his place, or to meet at Stamford and spend as much time as possible on his place. We could meet in New York City and visit Dr. Morris' place very comfortably. We have an invitation from Petersburg, Va.; one to meet with Dr. Kellogg, at Battle Creek, Mich., and one from Mr. Rush to meet at Lancaster, Pa. We have had under consideration a proposition to meet somewhere in the South, possibly with the Southern Nut Growers. Those are all the invitations that I know of.

MR. C. A. REED: May I make a remark right here? It seems to me that before we decide on the place of meeting we ought to take into consideration what we are going to any of these places to accomplish, and the time of year that we want to go there. Now, if we go to Lancaster, or to almost any of these other places, we ought to have a summer meeting when we can go out and see the trees, but if we go up to Battle Creek we could just as well go there in the winter time. The purpose of going there, as I understand it, would be to lay emphasis on the subject of nuts for food. Whether we want to take our time now for a meeting, to emphasize that, or whether we want to see nut trees growing and discuss cultural problems, is a question to be decided.

THE PRESIDENT: In the absence of a definite method of procedure on this question, which we never before handled in this way, the chair is entirely willing to receive instructions, but I suggest that we have a rising vote for one place after another, and that the place receiving the greatest number of votes gets the convention.

MR. M. P. REED: We have seen trees in nurseries for several years, and I think that now we ought to select some place where we can get other and broader ideas on nuts. I think Battle Creek would be the best place.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other favorite son or neighbor wish to make a speech in favor of his own or nearby city?

MR. HENRY STABLER: It appeals to me very strongly to see Dr. Morris' experimental grounds at Stamford, Connecticut. As I understand it, he has the greatest collection of nut-bearing trees in the United States, and looking over this would help us in a fine way.

MR. JAMES H. KYNER: Mr. President, I am not a member of this Association, but for a number of years I have been trying to grow nuts. I am very much interested in the subject, and I would like to know if I have any rights on this floor.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: It costs you two dollars to vote.

MR. KYNER: All right, I will just give two dollars.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I move that the gentleman be accepted as a full member now and have full authority to make speeches. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: The gentleman will proceed to the making of his speech.

MR. KYNER: I have no speech. I simply want to vote "aye" for Stamford and New York.

(Vote taken.)

THE SECRETARY: The result is as follows: For Evansville, 2; Stamford, 10; Battle Creek, 3; Petersburg, 3; Lancaster, 1; for Chicago, San Francisco and the National Nut Growers, 0.

THE PRESIDENT: We are now ready, I believe, to proceed with the technical part of the programme. The chair would like to call for information as to the relative behavior of the Northern pecans, top-worked or transplanted. Is there, for example, any evidence anywhere as to the fruiting of any Northern pecan except on the parent tree?

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Wilkinson, in Indiana, has some top-worked bearing trees.

THE PRESIDENT: Unfortunately, they are right at home. What varieties has he?

MR. MCCOY: The Major.

THE PRESIDENT: And how old was it before he top-worked it?

MR. MCCOY: Three years, I think.

THE PRESIDENT: On pecan?

A MEMBER: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: The Major bore the fourth year, three years old. I believe that is the first record we have of that sort. Has any other borne?

MR. MCCOY: A good many of my young trees bloom in the nursery, but I don't think they succeeded in setting any nuts.

MR. M. P. REED: We have had some two-year trees in nursery, grafted. Most all of them bloomed when two years old--the staminate but not the pestillate blossoms.

THE PRESIDENT: I had a staminate blossom the third season on Butterick in northern Virginia.

MR. HENRY STABLER: Is there any difference between trees budded from young trees in the nursery row which are not in bearing, which have a growth very much resembling water-sprouts, and those budded from bearing trees?

PROF. HUTT: Mr. President, I can't give any experimental data on that line, but the common practice of nurserymen in taking their bud-wood from the nursery stock has been in use for years and years, as with peaches. Very seldom do the nurserymen go to the original trees and get their buds, but it is cut from nursery stock, because it is in a fine condition to work. I think that trees propagated from young, vigorous wood, cut in the nursery, are all right. I am not so sure as to how long it is before they come into bearing.

MR. HENRY STABLER: I don't mean to say it is an undesirable practice to bud from the nursery row, but is there any difference in the time of coming into bearing?

THE PRESIDENT: I spent a very considerable amount of time and money in that belief, but at State College, they made an elaborate test, and they have found no difference between the tree from a water-sprout and one from the bearing tree.

MR. JONES: It is not practicable to propagate very largely from young trees, either fruit trees or nut trees, but there is a good deal in maturity of the wood. The plan we follow is to have mature plots and graft from these old trees. That gives the best wood for nursery propagation.

THE PRESIDENT: Keeping the same tree?

MR. JONES: Yes, right along. That costs a little more money than to propagate from the nursery, but we think it is better. We get better results.

THE PRESIDENT: How have the different varieties of the northern pecan shown up with regard to speed of growth? At the present time we are practically ignorant as to which of seven or eight named and propagated varieties to count on. Apparently, the Busseron has the record for early bearing, with the Major as second. What about the record of the trees for making wood, not in the nursery row, but after it has been transplanted and put in the field? Is there any distinct leadership of one Northern pecan over another in making wood?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: If the members who go out to my place this afternoon will observe closely they will have a chance to see something of the tree growth for the first three years. They will have a chance to observe the Indiana, the Busseron, the Kentucky, the Green River, the Major and the Posey, with three year's growth. They will see a row of Green Rivers, some trees nine feet high, and others that haven't grown two feet. That is the individual tree variation, however. They will see certain characteristics running clear through.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mr. Littlepage, it is a job to go and get exact results from another man's experimental ground. Which is the winner for speed, Mr. McCoy?

MR. MCCOY: Well, I know more about how they grow in the nursery than I do when transplanted. I haven't transplanted as many trees as Mr. Littlepage, but, of course, the tree will act very similarly in the nursery to what it does after you transplant it. We have learned at a glance to tell the difference in the varieties. We don't have to go to the books or to the stakes to tell each particular variety, as each variety has its distinguishing characteristics. For instance, the Kentucky and the Butterick and the Busseron are all inclined to grow up. I don't know why that should be true, but they all have the lumber characteristics. The Kentucky grows in the river bottoms surrounded by lumber trees. Now, the Posey doesn't grow very tall, but it grows a wonderful stocky, sturdy tree, and has leaf stems as long as my arm in the nursery. Of course, each particular wood has its color characteristics. But one thing I observed was that in the other nurseries they don't color up as they do in mine. For instance, at Mr. Jones', it will puzzle me sometimes to tell which variety it is by looking at the wood. Of course, after he would say "This is Butterick" or "Busseron," I could see, probably, the characteristics, but there is a little difference in the color of the wood.

THE PRESIDENT: Have you found any difference between these three trees as to attainment of height?

MR. MCCOY: Well, I suspect that the Butterick is the fastest grower of them.

THE PRESIDENT: What is the slowest?

MR. MCCOY: The Indiana, I guess.

A MEMBER: How does the Major behave?

MR. MCCOY: The Major is a very slender, tall tree. The Green River is inclined to be spreading.

THE PRESIDENT: That testimony as to the Indiana being a slow grower--does anybody verify it?

MR: LITTLEPAGE: Same thing in Maryland, Mr. President--slowest grower I have.

THE PRESIDENT: Is that sufficiently marked to make it best for us to hold up its propagation until it has shown some reason for being grown?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I don't know. The Busseron and the Indiana, which is supposed to be a seedling of the Busseron--the Busseron outgrows the Indiana in Maryland five times. But the Indiana is a thin-husked nut. The Busseron, on the other hand, is a thick-husked nut, a fine place for the nut worm if he ever gets bad. There are a lot of such things that you have to think of.

MR. MCCOY: I visited most of these parent trees this year. They are all centered around Evansville. There is no crop on the Busseron. The Indiana will, perhaps, have a peck. In the month of May, in Kentucky, and Indiana, and Illinois, we had rains continually. I have often heard the expression from the Southern nurserymen that "the pecan is caught with the frost." Now, that is clear out of place with us. We all smile at the idea that an Illinois, Indiana or Kentucky pecan would be caught with the frost, which never affects them. But the rains always affect them. If the month of May is a beautiful, dry, clear month, you can gamble on the pecan crop. Now, this year we won't have much of a crop. The Warwick will have a gallon or two, and the Kentucky crop is a failure. The Green River and Major we didn't get to, but I suspect that very few of our own trees will have a crop this year.

MR. M. P. REED: Mr. McCoy, I was up there last week, and the Busseron has probably four times as many nuts as the Indiana. It has a light crop, while the Indiana has a very light crop. (Laughter.)

MR. MCCOY: When were you there, Mr. Reed?

MR. M. P. REED: Last Sunday.

MR. JONES: You can't judge a pecan by the growth of the tree. You take a pecan that makes a thick head and lots of limbs, and it is very likely to be a heavy bearer. On the other hand, a nurseryman likes a variety that makes a tree, you know.

THE PRESIDENT: On your criterion of a bunched top, which of these eight varieties we are now propagating is the most promising?

MR. JONES: The Butterick appeals to me.

THE PRESIDENT: Is the Posey in the same class?

MR. JONES: The Indiana makes a thick head.

THE PRESIDENT: Does any other do that?

MR. JONES: The Green River is inclined to on the mature block, but not the first year in the nursery.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, in view of the fact that this meeting is reported, and that what we say will go into the official records to be read by lots of people who can't come and examine us, it might be understood that there would be some question about the bearing of these Northern pecan trees. As a matter of fact, I am surprised that any of them bore any nuts this year when I think how hard Mr. McCoy and Mr. Reed and myself have cut them for bud-wood. As a matter of fact, our opinion is that these Northern pecan trees are all excellent bearers, as the bearing reputation goes with pecan trees. I have watched them pretty carefully, and the best evidence of what I think of them is that I am setting them in my orchard. For fear that the minutes may leave the impression with some casual reader later that these trees bear a quart, and two gallons, I just want to say that if these gentlemen put into the record the amount of nuts that they know the Green River, the Butterick, the Posey and Major have borne--for instance, six weeks ago I bought sixty pounds of Posey nuts from a certain tree. The man who counted them counted 120 pounds on the tree, and if the boys around were as active as when I was a boy, I bet he didn't get more than half of them.

THE PRESIDENT: This is the time of year when the squirrels get nuts, and I expect they got after the trees, too.

MISS LOUISE LITTLEPAGE: Why does the rain affect the nuts, and why in that certain one month?

MR. MCCOY: In our latitude the pecan blooms somewhere near the twentieth of May, from that probably up to the twenty-fifth, and the pollen is scattered by the winds, and, if it rains at that particular time, the female bloom perishes, and we have no pecans. I think the pecan depends entirely upon the winds.

THE PRESIDENT: We have been hoping all the time that we would have a chance to hear from Prof. Hutt on the relation of the hickory stock to the pecan top. A good many persons have experimented with it, and papers are giving, from time to time, glowing accounts of the pecan tree on hickory roots. We would like to hear from Prof. Hutt.

PROF. HUTT: We haven't much data matured on that at present, Mr. President. It takes so long to get data on those subjects. We have a lot of trees budded on the stocks of water hickory and on the pecan, and we are testing them out. My theory was that the _Hicoria aquatica_, growing in wet, sour lands, would enlarge the range of probable production of pecans on such lands, and on lands on which the pecan, on its own roots, could not normally be grown, but our data are not matured yet. I think they have been three years in the nursery and two years set in the orchard. It will probably be four or five years before we get any exact data on that subject.

THE PRESIDENT: Perhaps, Mr. C. A. Reed has investigated some of the later top-worked hickories.

MR. C. A. REED: That is an old question--pecan on hickory. It has been tried all over the South and the Southwest, and you will see some this afternoon at Mr. Littlepage's place. As a usual thing, the enthusiasm over pecan on hickory has run high while the experiment was new. The propagator has found that it was not a difficult thing to make the scions live, and, so long as the hickory stock is larger than the pecan scion, so that the feeding capacity is equal to, or even greater than, the consuming capacity of the scion, the outlook has been very satisfactory and encouraging, and while that stage has been going on a great deal has been written. A little later you hear less about it, and less and less, until, finally, you hear almost nothing. But I will say this, that there are sections in the Southwest where there is considerable enthusiasm over it just now. Just recently an article was published by Judge Frank Gwynn which was quite encouraging, and from his point of view it is. He is on high, hilly land, where he has no pecan trees, and he has been able to get nuts considerably sooner by top-working these dryland hickories--the mocker nut, or "bull nut," as it is known down there--and so far he is getting very satisfactory crops. But it is the consensus of opinion over the entire South, so far as I have observed it, that where there are pecan trees suitable for top-working, they answer much better, and the final outcome is very much more satisfactory with pecan on pecan than with pecan on hickory. Now, with pecan on _Hicoria aquatica_, which Prof. Hutt spoke of, I can cite you one instance which is very interesting south of Morgan City, Louisiana. Mr. Frank Beadle, I believe, was the name, top-worked a number of trees that were standing in water, and he also top-worked some that he had transplanted from the wet bottom to higher land. Those that were transplanted lived and bore nuts for quite a number of years. The last I knew they were bearing quite satisfactory crops, but those that were allowed to remain in the standing water died very shortly after the pecan top began to develop. The entire tree died.

THE PRESIDENT: That is, the pecan top killed the native right in its own habitat.

MR. C A. REED: That's right.

DR. STABLER: How about the acidity of the soil on that higher land? Was that tested?

MR. C. A. REED: Well, there would be so very little difference in the level of the soil that I imagine the acidity would be about the same. When I said "high land" I meant land that wasn't over-flowed.

DR. STABLER: Oh, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Reed, you made the qualified statement awhile ago that where a man had a choice between hickory and pecan stock for top-working, he should take the pecan. Now, in the North there are magnificent stands of native hickory--the Appalachians are full of it from end to end. Would you advise him not to bother with that?

MR. C. A. REED: There is another question that enters there. I don't believe that you can grow good pecans on hickory stocks on uplands where there is not moisture enough in the soil to grow good pecans on pecan stocks. It takes moisture to make pecans, and if there isn't enough in the upland soil to grow pecan trees on pecan roots I don't believe there is any evidence to indicate that you can get them on hickory roots.