Envelopes for report 9.00
       Miscellaneous printing 32.50
       Postage and stationery 49.26
       Stenographer 26.35
       Express and freight 2.77
       Prizes 18.00
       Checks, J. R. S. expenses and circulars 180.00
       Lantern operator 3.00
       Litchfield Savings Society 20.00
                                                           ———-
                                                                   $483.44
                                                                   ———-
       Balance on hand $21.45

Receipts from all sources, except sale of reports, have fallen off markedly, as have new members, 31 less than last year, though we have now 154 paid up members, one more than last year. 10 members have resigned and 42 have been dropped for non-payment of dues. We have lost one member by death, Herbert R. Orr, of Washington.

The committees on membership and on finance should be more active.

Our annual report constitutes the minutes of the last meeting. Our nut contest and other matters of interest have been reported through the columns of the American Nut Journal, our official organ.

[Accepted.]

THE PRESIDENT: Next in order of business is the first step toward the election of officers for the ensuing year. It is our custom to have a nominating committee elected at an early session. They deliberate and bring forward a slate which is voted on at a later session. This morning is a suitable time for the election of a committee, and tomorrow morning will be a suitable time for their report. Are there any nominations for the Nominating Committee?

MR. M. P. REED: Mr. President, I move that Dr. Morris, Mr. C. P. Close,
Mr. C. A. Reed, Prof. Stabler and Dr. Ira Ulman be appointed as the
Nominating Committee.

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any other nominations?

MR. C. A. REED: Mr. President, I would like to ask that Mr. Littlepage's name replace my name on that committee.

THE PRESIDENT: Will the nominating member accept that amendment?

MR. M. P. REED: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any other nominations? Do I hear a second to the nominations?

A MEMBER: Second it.

[Carried.]

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any other committees to report at this time?

THE SECRETARY: There is a Committee on Incorporation.

MR. T. P. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the Committee on Incorporation has done some investigating as to the desirability of incorporating the Association, and also, if desirable, under what laws, but that committee has not yet made any final report nor come to any final conclusion, and I would suggest, as a member of the committee, that the committee be continued and instructed to report the following year.

THE PRESIDENT: I think that it is unnecessary to vote on the continuance of the committee, as it was appointed with indefinite tenure. We will proceed with the programme and first have the pleasure of listening to Dr. Morris.

NOTES ON THE CHINQUAPINS.

DR. ROBERT T. MORRIS, NEW YORK

According to Sargent the chinquapin (Castanea pumila) occupies dry sandy ridges, rich hillsides and the borders of swamps from southern Pennsylvania to northern Florida and the valley of the Neches River in Texas. He states that this chestnut is usually shrubby in the region east of the Alleghany Mountains, and assuming the tree form west of the Mississippi River. Most abundant and of largest size in southern Arkansas and eastern Texas.

Curiously enough there are chinquapins also in northeastern Asia which occur as understudies of the larger chestnuts, very much as they do in America.

The indigenous range of the chinquapin in America is limited northward by a plan of nature for checking distribution of the species. This plan is manifested in a habit which the nuts have of sprouting immediately upon falling in the early autumn. They proceed busily to make a tap root which may become several inches in length before frost calls a halt. In the north where the warm season is not long enough to allow the autumn sprout to lignify sufficiently for bearing the rigors of winter it is killed. If we protect the small autumn plants, or if we transplant older seedlings from their natural habitat, they may be grown easily far north of their indigenous range. Thrifty chinquapins are happy in the Arnold Arboretum at Jamaica Plain in Massachusetts, and no one knows but they might be cultivated in Nova Scotia and Minnesota.

The American chinquapin is one of the many beautiful and valuable plants which have not as yet been taken up by horticulturists for extensive development. It promises to become one of our important sources of food supply for tomorrow. If we were to develop all of our plant resources at once it would be an unkindness to the horticulturists of two thousand years from now, who would be left moping around with nothing to do. Chinquapin nuts borne in heavy profusion by the plants are delicious in quality, but usually too small to attract customers aside from the wood folk. The wood of the chinquapin of tree form (C. pumila var. arboriformis) is valuable for purposes to which wood of the common American chestnut is put, and some of the tree chinquapins acquire an earned increment of two or three feet diameter of trunk, and a height of more than fifty feet. The bush chinquapin on the other hand feels rather exclusive when attaining a height of as much as fifteen feet.

I present for inspection a freshly cut branch from an ordinary bush chinquapin, loaded with burs, indicating the prolific nature of the variety. The nuts in this particular specimen are small. The next branch exhibited is from a similar bush, but with nuts quite as large as those of the average common chestnut. The horticulturist has only to graft or bud his ordinary run of chinquapin stocks from some one bush which bears large nuts, and he will then have a valuable graded market product. The larger the nut the less prolific the plant is a rule which holds good with the fruiting of almost any plant.

Look at this branch from a tree chinquapin. It is not remarkable in any way, but the leaves seem to be a little larger than those of the bush chinquapin. My tree chinquapins came from Stark's nursery in Missouri. The first two which came into bearing had nuts quite as large as those of the common chestnut and I imagined that a discovery of value had been made, but other trees of this variety later bore very small nuts, and all of the tree chinquapin nuts, large and small, were much duller in color than those of the bush chinquapin. My final conclusion is that so far as nuts alone are concerned we may plant and cultivate either the tree variety or the bush variety of the species and then bud or graft any number of stocks from some one plant which bears the best product.

DR. AUGUSTUS STABLER: Is it a somewhat finer grained wood than the ordinary chestnut?

DR. MORRIS: I think it is. All the