Littlepage's question about the weevils. The question may be settled very easily where there are not many chinquapin trees. That is the case in Connecticut. Collect all the nuts, and you collect all of the weevil larvae. Curiously enough, the common chestnut weevil, that had become very abundant, has disappeared locally with the disappearance of our American chestnut, and has not attacked our chinquapins. If you have an orchard of chinquapins and collect all the nuts you will soon dispose of the weevils. That is the only way that I know of for disposing of the weevils. Eat them up. (Laughter.) You can pick out the weevil chestnuts fairly well if you toss all of the nuts into a cup of water and pick out the ones that float. Pound them up with a mallet and throw them into the chicken coop.

Dr. Smith asks if the use of the tree chinquapin as a stock for the American chestnut would give good-sized trees. Undoubtedly, and, besides that, if it is used for hybridizing purposes, we shall probably find that we have, now and then, an individual that is very much larger than the American chestnut or the tree chinquapin. It is a peculiarity of hybrids to show eccentricities, and many hybrids that occur are very thrifty and larger than either parent. That is the case with the Royal walnut that they have said so much about in California. It grows so rapidly there that even Californians do not dare to tell about it. (Laughter.)

Another question, the last one—will the effect of using a bush chinquapin stock for the American chestnut be like that of growing sour cherries upon stocks which do not carry them well? Now, we have there what the lawyers call "a question of fact," and we shall have to work that out. Some tops will exhaust a root. Some tops will grab a root by the back of the neck and drag it right along. Some tops will adjust themselves philosophically to almost any sort of unusual conditions, and go on and bear fruit like true philosophers. We have an instance of that in the dwarf apple, which is a success. We have an instance of failure in some of the cherries which exhaust themselves. We have an example of dragging the smaller stock along when we graft the Royal walnut upon the common black walnut. The Royal walnut just drags the black walnut along where it doesn't want to go at all. So there we have three instances of grafting a foreign visitor upon another stock.

I have taken more than my share of time, Mr. Chairman, but the discussion has been very interesting, indeed. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: I am going to take the liberty of asking Dr. Morris one more question, which, perhaps, is of interest to others. In your experience with the golden-leafed chinquapins, from how far South have you secured stock, and how far North will the golden-leafed chinquapin grow?

DR. MORRIS: My specimens I got from a dealer in Portland, Oregon, and they grew pretty far North. The tree ranges from Oregon and Washington down through the lower extremities of the Coast range, but we had better get the northern forms, and there is one man, Carl Purdy, of Ukiah, California, who has the golden chinquapin for sale.

THE PRESIDENT: The next subject on the programme is the American black walnut. We have sent to the membership a series of questions about the black walnut which I will read for the benefit of those who haven't this programme.

First. What evidence is there to show that the black walnut may become a valuable nut commercially?

Second. Is quality important with the black walnut, and is there much difference in the quality of different nuts?

Third. What varieties of black walnut are most promising?

Fourth. Is the Thomas black walnut better than many others that have been brought to notice?

Fifth. What are the best methods of propagating?

Now, we have no set paper on that subject. I will call on ex-President
Littlepage to make a few sallies concerning the black walnut.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the black walnut ought to be the easiest subject in the world to talk about. It is a question of how much one ought not to say, however, in a limited time. The pecan tree was my first love. I shall always stick to the pecan. But if I were called upon today, to point out to this Association or to any prospective grower who actually wants to make money raising nuts, and who wants something that will pay the grocery bill and his sixty or ninety day notes, I think I should tell them to plant the black walnut. And I don't think, either, that that is treason, because I think, as we go through with this programme, the pecan will be properly taken care of.

In the first place, the black walnut is a native tree. I have seen it growing, too, on the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Dominion of Canada. Most native trees are immune to fungous and bacterial diseases that destroy so many trees. The black walnut is a hardy tree, and a fine timber proposition. In the second place, it is a fast growing tree. I don't knew just how quickly one could actually produce a black walnut orchard, but, outside of a few trees, such as the black locust and a number of others that do not produce nuts, the black walnut is one of the fastest growers. If you will feed a young walnut tree a small application of wood ashes and some stable manure it will commonly make a growth of six or seven feet a year. Therefore, you don't have to wait a long time for walnut trees to come into bearing.

It is easy to propagate the black walnut. Cleft grafting is one of the simplest methods in the spring. Dormant wood, cut in February or March and put in cold storage, and cleft grafted in the spring, ought to give from sixty to seventy per cent of success. I haven't had experience budding, but those who have say it is easy. Mr. Roper says it is, but grafting is easy and simple. The walnut, like other nut trees, must be propagated by budding or grafting in order to come true. It will not come true from seed.

Up until a few years ago I seldom saw a whole half of a black walnut. The ordinary black walnut cracks about like this (showing picture). Here is a black walnut cracked with two halves, and you can't even see the kernel. The two upper pictures show very beautiful walnuts, but they defy you to get out a whole kernel.

Now, then, when you come to a black walnut like this (showing picture), where you can crack out anywhere from fifty to seventy-five per cent of whole halves, and many entirely whole kernels, the most important problem is solved, and the black walnut has come into the competition.

This variety was discovered by Henry Stabler, and I named it after him. Perhaps one out of every ten of these nuts furnishes a whole, solid, undivided kernel. The other walnut is the ordinary field walnut that has little commercial value for the reason that you can't get the kernels out. It wouldn't make any difference if the nuts grew as big as pumpkins and a million of them on a tree if you couldn't get the meat out of them. I suppose no one will question that the black walnut will grow and bear almost anywhere. It is a weed tree in this part of the country. On President Smith's farm last year I saw them growing everywhere. They grow and bear all over the fields. And, as I said, the question of propagation is rather simple. I think the great trouble we are up against on the farm in America is labor, and that is because you cannot afford to pay good labor. You want a superabundance of laborers in the summer time for two or three months, and expect them to loaf all winter. The farm proposition isn't a profitable one, very largely because of the question of labor, and the farmers of this country must produce something profitable enough to enable them to hire and pay high-grade labor the year round, or they will go broke. They must raise such crops as