Persian walnut, said to be from a seedling grown at Sharp, Georgia, in the apple country just below Chattanooga, at an elevation of eight hundred to a thousand feet, and it gets cold up there—they have heavy freezing every winter. This tree began bearing at seven or eight years, the owner said, and has borne a crop every year for the past seven or eight years, and he had several losses of fruit crops from late spring frosts during that period. The nut was very well filled and of fair size. If any one is interested sufficiently and will write to me as soon as I get back to the college I will send the name of the grower. I do not recommend it as I have never seen more than a dozen of the nuts. This was of interest to me, because I have not been recommending the Persian walnut there on account of the late spring frosts, but now it looks as if there was a chance of our getting into the walnut game ourselves.

Mr. Pomeroy: A prominent expert who came to the farm once said to me that the Persian or English walnut came to this country through two routes: one through Greece, Italy and Spain, and taken by the Spaniards to Mexico and southern California, and the other route through Germany and England into the United States from the north. He said he would rather have his walnut trees come from the northern route trees than the southern.

Professor Smith: Any one who has a good tree ought to write to our secretary. I hope everybody will report these trees. The information will be published in bulletin form and sent out to every member of the Association. I fully believe that this information gathered and disseminated will greatly assist in developing the walnut industry in the eastern part of the United States.

Mr. Frost: Mr. Pomeroy said that the pruning might be done at any time of the year. I pruned a walnut tree one spring and it very nearly bled to death.

Mr. Pomeroy: It seems to me that I have always pruned at any time. It might be that when the sap is just nicely started—just before the tree starts and the buds swell—it might not be wise to do that. I suppose that the nut trees might bleed then the same as grape vines and certain other plants and trees. I thought it never did any harm.

Mr. Frost: It very nearly killed mine. They were big trees, too.

The Chairman: I had just such an experience as that with grape vines. We found that if grapes are pruned at a certain time in the spring they will bleed profusely, and sometimes actually bleed to death. I never had any experience with walnuts, but with vines we prune in the fall just as soon as they are dormant. At that time the energies of the plant are at a minimum and you can prune more safely than at any other time. As we go on toward spring the moisture becomes greater and the sap starts, so if you prune late in the spring there is great danger of injury to all plants. If you prune in the fall you have no trouble.

Mr. Wile: I would like to know if any one has had experience with California varieties here in the East.

Professor Van Deman: Professor Close has had more than any one else. I have also heard of some in Florida.

Professor Lake: We have had three years' experience; we have had also the experience of others who have had them a longer time than that. Some three years ago we grafted a number of California varieties on the eastern black. In view of the eastern conditions, these are all making splendid growth—some of them made a three-foot growth last year, some a five and one-half foot growth this year. They went through last winter splendidly; they are holding back finely in the spring and we had no trouble with spring frosts on the grafted portions, even though many of the seedlings were injured.

The Chairman: Will the Persian walnut fertilize itself under eastern conditions?

Professor Smith: I think we will have to trust to outside fertilization by the black walnut or butternut. They all bloom at the same time. One fertilizing tree will do, but it is better to have more than one because sometimes it might turn out that the staminate catkins came a few days too early or too late to fertilize the nut. The more trees you have, the better the chances; the more trees in a group the better. The reason a five or six-year-old Persian walnut tree does not bear many walnuts is that there are no staminate catkins. It takes old wood to produce them. There is not enough old wood.

Mr. Stabler: The Stabler walnut which I have just mentioned, bloomed from the tenth to the twenty-fifth of June. The black walnuts of that neighborhood all came out from a month to six weeks earlier than that, and not a single black walnut tree had blossoms on in that neighborhood, nor a single Persian walnut at the time the Stabler tree blossomed. I believe I am fairly well acquainted there and there was not a single other tree had catkins on at that time, and yet that tree bore a good crop of catkins and a large number of pistillate blossoms and later a good crop of nuts which is fairly good evidence that it must have fertilized itself.

The Chairman: We would like to continue this discussion, but we have another paper that bears on the subject, and I think it will bring out some points in connection with it.

FORAGE NUTS AND THE CHESTNUT AND WALNUT IN EUROPE

J. Russell Smith, Virginia

The great task of American agriculture is to feed our beasts. Approximately nine tenths of the proceeds of American agriculture goes to nourish the quadruped, and man eats the remaining one tenth; therefore, if we want to get clear of the possibility of a crop being overproduced, let us grow something the beast can eat. To say that we will never overproduce food crops for man is ridiculous. It is quite possible, for instance, that we may produce too many Persian walnuts for man's food, but the tree that will produce nuts to feed the beasts is on a firm basis. Pigs are going up and they are going to stay up. If we can get something that will suit Brother Pig we are on a perfectly safe basis, and that is the basis of the chestnut industry in Europe. In large sections of France, from Switzerland to the Atlantic, there are thousands of acres of chestnut trees—a great forage crop. In a few districts it looks like a forested country, on account of the heavy chestnut tree groves. The tenant who takes a farm has certain restrictions placed upon him in the removal and use of the crop. He is not allowed to remove the chestnuts in France. The tenant who takes the farm, signs a contract that he will not sell the chestnuts but will feed them to the pigs so the soil may not be exhausted. They gather them carefully and use them in a number of ways. They make the main bread supply of the people. I have eaten chestnut cake. It is not bad. They treat it exactly as we do corn cake. When they can afford something better, they do so.

At harvest time the chestnuts are put in drying houses, a fire is built under them and after they are thoroughly dried they will keep indefinitely. We find them on the market as dried chestnuts; and I have seen people eating them raw in June of the year after. Chestnut meal is a standard article of consumption and the price is regulated by the price of cornmeal.

I have seen considerable areas planted out regularly in rows of young trees, and alongside of that older ones. They plant on perfectly fine, level ground hundreds of acres of