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

Mr. Littlepage. Do they winter-kill any?

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

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

Mr. Littlepage: What is the variety?

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Pomeroy: The husks turn black?

Professor Close: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Littlepage: Did the young pecan trees bloom.

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

Mr. Littlepage: What kind of bloom?

Professor Close: Both kinds.

Dr. Morris: Which hazels are these?

Professor Close: They were undoubtedly European.

Dr. Morris: I think that is a very important point. Some time ago I said that our wild hazel drove the cows out of the pasture. It is a worthless weed with us in Connecticut and it is an important thing for us to transform our hazel pasture lands that are full of thickets of this weed over into good bearing propositions. I grafted a lot of hazelnut bushes with European