MR. MOSELY: I would like to ask just what results you expect from the cross pollenization of these nuts, and just how far they will differ from the parent type?

DR. MORRIS: You are bound to have continuance of one parent type, but in crossing with pollen from hybrids you may carry desirable characteristics through a series of generations and breed for what is wanted, possibly to the sixth generation or even further with some species.

MR. MOSELY: Then the type is not fixed until pollenization?

DR. MORRIS: By selecting the one showing the dominant characteristics you wish to preserve, you could breed through several generations and have an ideal type eventually.

MR. DOAN: I would like to ask how far the buds are developed in cold storage before the pollen can be used?

DR. MORRIS: For instance, take the hazel when its catkins are just beginning to elongate. It may be put in the ice house and kept there, for two or three weeks dormant. When we wish to develop those flowers we put the branches in a jar of water in a warm room and in about three days the plants are shedding pollen. I got some hazel catkins this spring that were elongating. It was the latter part of February when we had one or two warm days and I believed my pistillate hazels were about ready for pollen. I got those branches from Rochester. We had unexpected cold weather and storms and my pistillate hazels did not bloom until more than two weeks later. I kept these undeveloped catkins that I had received in a cold dark place. When I wanted to use them I put them in a jar of water and in less than three days they were shedding pollen freely, at a time when my pistillate flowers were ready for pollen.

MR. MOSELY: I would like to know the object in crossing the oak on the chinkapin.

DR. MORRIS: My idea is to get a chinkapin tree twice as large as an oak, perhaps. I shall hope to have a chinkapin tree as sturdy as the red oak, with nuts larger than acorns and of as good quality as the chinkapin nut. Of course that extravagant possibility only appeals to one with a speculative nature.

THE PRESIDENT: Pursuant to the authority conferred on the President this morning, the following committees are announced:

On Nomination—Robert T. Morris, Chairman: C. P. Close, J. L. Doan, R. T. Olcott, C. A. Reed.

Exhibits—Prof. C. P. Close, Chairman; J. P. Wilkinson, E. A. Riehl, Colonel Sober, W. C Reed.

Resolutions—W. O. Potter, Chairman; H. R. Weber, J. Russell Smith.

The chair also wishes to place an additional member on the membership committee, in the place of Mr. Corsan, who has not been able to attend the last two meetings, and will appoint Leon D. Batchellor of Utah.

Committee on Revision of Constitution and Rules—Prof. C. P. Close, Dr. W. C. Deming.

I will also add to the committee on nomenclature C. A. Reed and R. L. McCoy.

THE PRESIDENT: We have a few minutes before time for adjournment and Mr. Evans, a dynamite man, will speak to us.

MR. EVANS: Mr. Chairman: The question arises as to what kind of dynamite to use in the different soils. Most pecan land contains clay and can best be worked by dynamite. Don't buy ordinary dynamite, because it is too high an explosive. For several reasons it is not the kind of an explosive you wish. In some places dynamite can hardly be put on the market as many people are afraid of it and so the word dynamite has been eliminated, and we now have what we call Red Cross Farm Powder. It will work in any part of the country, it is not a high explosive and the price is lower as the hardware dealers have it direct from the Dupont companies. By using this Red Cross Farm Powder, less labor is required and it doesn't cost very much. For labor and all it will cost you about five cents per hole, and that includes the dynamite caps, fuse and labor.

PROFESSOR SMITH: How much do you use?

MR. EVANS: That depends on the soil and also on the depth to which you want to shoot the hole. Nurserymen have different opinions on that subject, but in the southern field where I have been working they usually go from two and a half to three feet deep. They use one-half stick 20 per cent dynamite, or one quarter of a pound as it weighs two sticks to the pound. That should make a hole two and a half or three feet deep. Fuse is cheap and you should use plenty of it. A man has to be governed always by the kind of soil he is dealing with.

MR. POMEROY: In shooting an old apple orchard how deep would you go?

MR. EVANS: Where I have been working from three and a half to four feet, but as I said before it will depend largely on the soil.

MR. POMEROY: How far from the body of the tree?

MR. EVANS: I have never made a study of that.

MR. POTTER: In limestone soil, for instance, built up with clay, how near the trees would you use the dynamite if you want to loosen up the soil?

MR. EVANS: What kind of trees?

MR. POTTER: Pecan.

MR. EVANS: About six feet. I think that is close enough.

MR. POTTER: Would you make more than one hole around the tree?

MR. EVANS: Use your own judgment about that.

MR. POTTER: How far out will it loosen or break up the ground?

MR. EVANS: Probably six feet. You can distinguish on the top of the ground where it takes place.

MR. POTTER: How deep will it be?

MR. EVANS: About a foot deeper than the charge is placed.

THE SECRETARY: With me the most important thing in using dynamite is the question of headache. I used the 20 per cent at first and it had no effect. I had heard of its causing headaches and knew some people couldn't use it but I thought I was immune. Then I began to use 70 or 80 per cent and I got knocked out for twenty-four hours. The more I used it the more susceptible I became. When I went back to handling the lower percentages I got the same results, was completely knocked out and had to go to bed. Sometimes the effect would come on a long time after I used the dynamite, perhaps hours afterwards, and the headache would increase, until I was intensely nauseated and had to give up entirely. Is there anything to prevent that? Is it caused by the fumes after the explosion?

MR. EVANS: Some say it is from handling the dynamite, others say it is the fumes after the explosion. Red Cross has ammonia in it and that ought to help some. Dynamite contains nitro glycerine and if you handle it bare handed it gets in the pores of the skin and causes rapid heart action. In dynamiting holes for tree planting you will get the fumes and you will get a headache. If a man could work with gloves on he could avoid this to a very great extent. You can't do it easily but if you can do it without taking off the gloves I don't think it would bother you much. I neglected to state that dynamite by itself is not dangerous because it will withstand shock or fire or anything like that. The danger is in the cap. It contains the most powerful explosive known. If you handle them carefully, there is absolutely no danger. This year we are slipping little copper disks into the caps with a pin hole for the fire to strike through.

MR. HARGIS: I have difficulty in making the shots. Should you put your cap at the bottom or the top of the stick?

MR. EVANS: I should advise the top. A misfire is always expensive. If you think it is necessary put in a cap in the bottom and one in the top.

MR. POMEROY: If you have a misfire and the men don't like to monkey around it, and neither do you, just step off a few inches and stick in another one and let her go. Will that fix the stick that didn't go off?

MR. EVANS: That is the safest way.

MR. HARGIS: In tamping say you have a hole in a rock four feet. I have had men tell me to pour the hole full of water. Is that right?

MR. EVANS: That is the best method known.

In tree planting you will always have to use your own judgment. Go down four or five or six feet to learn the character of the soil, tamp the cartridge well and as fuse is not expensive, always use plenty of it.

THE PRESIDENT: Any further discussion of this, or any further questions on the use of dynamite?

MR. DOAN: Mr. President, I would like to mention a method I found helpful. That is to make two holes in the cartridge, one diagonally down from one side, thrusting the fuse bearing the cap through that, and then making a hole diagonally in the other side and thrusting the cap in it.

MR. EVANS: We do not advocate using that method because dynamite will become ignited from the fuse and will burn. To be frank with you that is the method we use, but the company does not approve of it and we should not use it. You are liable to have a misfire. In warm weather there is no danger but in cold weather don't use it. The best method is to bore right in at an angle of forty-five degrees.

MR. POTTER: Do you advise us to use dynamite?

MR. EVANS: Yes, we have men making a business of it.

MR. POTTER: To be frank with you I don't like to use it.

MR. EVANS: Dynamite is not dangerous. It is the caps, though they look safe. It is that white stuff in the dynamite cap. There is where the danger is.

THE PRESIDENT: We will stand adjourned until 1 o'clock.

* * * * *

Re-convened at 1 P. M.

THE PRESIDENT: I will ask W. C. Reed to state something of his program for Saturday so the members may know about it.

W. C. REED: Our plans for Saturday morning are that we are leaving Evansville at 7:30, arriving in Vincennes at 9:30; several automobiles will be in waiting there to take all the party out to the nurseries and get back to the station for the 2 o'clock train going north to Oaktown, where there will be automobiles in waiting to take us out to see the original Busseron and Indiana trees, coming back to Oaktown in time for the 6:40 train south, arriving in Vincennes at 7:07, or the train north out of Oaktown to Terre Haute, to connect for Pittsburgh over the Pennsylvania Lines or Big Four if anyone wants to go that way. We would like to have everyone go with us Saturday, if possible, and would also like to know sometime this afternoon before we adjourn how many are going, so I can notify them tonight how many automobiles there will be needed at each point.

THE PRESIDENT: That is rather an important visit for the members to make for two or three reasons. Those of you who haven't had the opportunity of seeing the pecan propagated in Mr. McCoy's nursery will get a chance to see Mr. Reed's nursery; and you will get to see the parent trees of two good northern Varieties. We know very much depends on the location of the original parent tree, notwithstanding it is sometimes said it is the location of the nursery that determines the hardiness. We know that has nothing to do with it. You cannot, by putting a tree in a nursery for six months, change its nature. If you take this trip Saturday, you will have a chance to see the Busseron and the Indiana.

MR. REED: We will also visit the Niblack tree if we have time.

THE PRESIDENT: I would suggest that all go who can. I want also to urge all of you to make the trip tomorrow and see the big seedling pecan trees bearing nuts hanging almost to the ground. You cannot always see that because usually they are so tall. I also want to call your attention to the exhibits in the other room. Mr. Wilkinson has a very fine collection in there. Col. Sober has some very fine exhibits of chestnuts, both of burrs and nuts, and Mr. W. C. Reed has a very fine collection and possibly there are many others I should mention. You ought to examine all of them, because the only way of drawing correct conclusions about these things comes from careful study, and it cannot be done hastily. The next on the program this afternoon will be Mr. McCoy's talk.

MR. MCCOY: I have no set speech to make I thought maybe there were some things I might say to be a help to some of you; some things that would have been lots of help to me a year or two ago from some one, because nut trees are more difficult than any other nursery stock to propagate, and for another reason it is more difficult in the North than in the South. Mr. Paul White and Mr. Ford Wilkinson have both worked in the North and in the South, and after coming back home these boys say that anybody can propagate pecans in the South, but with us it is different. We have kept at it, though, and our president has been our good friend and has always helped us out. There have been three of us incessantly at the work. Mr. Littlepage would come down home and get us together and ginger us up, and we would go back and go to work and try again. It has been one continuous line of failures, but every year we have learned some things, or at least learned how not to do it. This spring we were fortunate in having an expert from the South who came to my nursery and stayed there until midsummer, and we saw our own work compared with his. We all had great respect for him and he is able, too. I don't think he had much respect for us when he got here but he had a whole lot when he went away for he made a miserable failure like the rest of us. Mr. Jones, you know, is an authority on grafting. He is the man that introduced it to the nut world, at least in the East. I think it had been tried in California before. We have tried his methods and everything else that government experts or any other expert told us about, and we have read all the magazines that were published from the South to the North. Everything seemed to be a failure and finally I got disgusted and said "We will do it to suit ourselves." After we had tried all the hard ways in Christendom I think we have at last found an easy way to do it. Like everything else it is easy when you know how. I believe it is a fact—and I am saying nothing but what I believe—I don't believe you will ever successfully graft pecan trees in the North, unless you equalize your sap flow by pruning your roots. I tried it and failed. It is possible you may be able to side graft under most favorable conditions. You may make a side graft take if you leave the top on to take care of the extra sap flow. You take off the top of a pecan tree, or any other nut tree in this country, and you ruin your root system because your sap comes with such vengeance—and it comes! One day there is no show of sap and the next day it comes with vengeance. Differences in the soil, of course, makes some difference. At Mr. Littlepage's place, Paul had the sap a week before I did and Mr. Wilkinson had it four days before. A great many of our top works are going to the bad because we ruined the root system when we cut the tree. And I want to say it again, I don't believe we can make a success of it in the North. You may do it in Oregon where you have a distributed sap flow. The Oregon fellows say you can't bud, because they don't know how. They say the only way you can produce trees is to graft. That may be true out there but you can't graft in Indiana, I know, especially on my place. Of course the soil of each particular farm has something to do with it. To illustrate my point, the first year I was in the state of Wisconsin, on the 20th of June, I was out in the country and saw a man setting tobacco. I knew him and I said, "Won't that tobacco get frost bit?" and he said, "I reckon not. It might but it never did." I thought it would, but I went that way in two weeks again and I changed my mind. I had been used to seeing tobacco growing in the Ohio valley where it does its growing in the latter part of the season. In the South the sap flow is much better distributed than it is in the North.

Now, then, I have brought a board along with these young trees stuck in it, because I thought some of the members would like to see a demonstration. The tools I have here are not adequate, hardly, for the job. For a tree that size we take a saw to it.

(Here Mr. McCoy makes a demonstration of cleft grafting.)

MR. POTTER: Would you have a scion as long as that in actual work?

MR. MCCOY: Many of them are, but it would be better smaller, probably. That is a matter I don't think there is much to, whether the scion has one bud or ten. I think three is perhaps about right.

MR. POTTER: They come together right there?

MR. MCCOY: Exactly on the front side. Now you understand this grafting is done when the sap is flowing, or about the time the sap flow begins. Usually at our latitude here you will commence grafting anywhere from the 6th of April to about that time in May. Of course when you are cutting trees at that time you have got an immense flow of sap. Mr. Jones tried this method without drainage, that is the way they do out in Louisiana, but he only got ten per cent to stick, so we had to work out a drainage for ourselves. Take a piece of heavy wrapping paper, rather good quality such as you can get at any paper store, and put it right over your graft, and a little bit below the cut on your stock. Then simply take a piece of raffia and wrap. Then make the ordinary tie that anyone knows how to make with the cotton or twine, or sometimes with the raffia, and you have the drainage of this paper. The tie, of course, is simply to re-enforce the strain on the graft and hold it. Then you apply the grafting wax. The one we use is three of resin, one of beeswax, and lampblack and a little bit of linseed oil. Cover up the graft entirely, except don't cover over the lower end of this paper because there is the drainage where the sap flows out. Then you put an ordinary paper sack right over it, and leave it on for about three weeks.

A MEMBER: You don't tie the paper below the raffia?

MR. MCCOY: That does not make any difference.

A MEMBER: At what time do you cut a hole in the bag to give it air, or do you do that?

MR. MCCOY: Not for two or three weeks.

(Mr. McCoy now gives a demonstration in budding.)

We will suppose this is a seedling and I want to bud it. I place my budder on like that. Now I have got my shield up. Now I lay my budder on the stock something like that.

MR. SMITH: Why not wrap over the bud?

Mr. MCCOY: Because it will injure it. It is essential to cover all the cut surface you can. Make it waterproof at the top, and have it open at the bottom.

MR. POTTER: How long does that stay on the bud?

MR. MCCOY: I don't know as that makes any difference unless you want to force the bud.

MR. MCELDERRY: When do you take that off?

MR. MCCOY: I don't know as that makes any difference. I have thousands of them that have been on five or six weeks. I take it off when action begins. It varies, it may be two weeks and it may be six and it might be six months. If you have maximum budding conditions generally the tree itself will tell the story. We frequently take it off and have to rewrap.

MR. W. C. REED: Would ten days be too quick?

MR. MCCOY: In most cases, yes.

MR. REED: Fruit trees is two weeks, but pecan trees are not quite as quick?

MR. MCCOY: Pecan trees will come through the rye about as quick as a peach tree.

MR. REED: I am talking about cherry trees.

MR. MCCOY: I think about twenty or twenty-five days is about right. You know as well as I do that cases are not all alike, and you have to know when to unwrap.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: How can you tell this if the bud is covered up?

MR. MCCOY: You can tell easy enough if the bud is alive, just like anything else.

MR. MOSELY: You say you can't graft pecan trees here?

MR. MCCOY: I don't think so.

MR. WEBBER: What do you graft?

MR. POTTER: And what will you do about the nut trees?

MR. MCCOY: I will bud.

MR. WEBBER: What value is the grafting to us?

MR. MCCOY: You may be able to graft.

MR. W. C. REED: We can graft.

MR. MCCOY: Maybe you can, but I can't.

I don't think root grafting is a success, although we have some fine trees that are root grafted. I don't know what it is but there is something wrong; some of them are all right, to be sure but I don't find it a general success. Of the two methods, grafting and budding, I will bud.

MR. HARGIS: Mr. McCoy, I have a number of seedling pecan trees in good healthy condition and I want to transform them into good bearing trees. What shall I do?

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Littlepage will cover that.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know about that, whether I can or not, but that will come later. There is one thing that ought to be covered, or demonstrated here, and that is the method of working the hickory and the pecan by the slip bark method. I think the slip bark method in the hickory and pecan is a method that everybody ought to know, and also this ought to be used with the walnut tree. Some of the walnuts ought to be top worked to English walnuts in the North. And it's the same way with the hickory through this section. There are thousands and tens of thousands that ought to be top worked to fine shagbarks, and I am going to call on Mr. White who is the most successful man in this topwork method I have ever seen. I top worked twenty-six this spring, and got twenty-three to grow; he did twenty-two and made twenty-one grow, so that record beats mine. I will say also to those of you who are interested, get a copy of Mr. Olcott's Nut Journal and you will see a lot of good cuts showing the results of top working. To those of you who do not know Mr. White I will say that he is associated with me in some tree work and I think he is perhaps one of the most successful top workers I have ever seen. Paul, you will now give us your demonstration.

(Paul White now gives demonstration of top working.)

MR. RIEHL: I would like to say a few things right here, I don't want to be thought altogether idle. I live in Illinois, your neighboring state. I have learned lots of good things here and I want to give a little. I have been experimenting in the nut business for some time; I have studied propagation and there is one point I think will be new to you. I had difficulty in propagating hickories and pecans until I got the thought of hermetically sealing the scion. I first used gum shellac, but later I found that by covering the scion with grafting wax completely it serves the same purpose as the paper. It takes the place of all that wrapping, except right at the wound, and does away with the sacks. I have tried them and I much prefer covering with grafting wax. Your buds will come right through the wax, and you don't have to bother about taking off the sacks, and there is no danger of leaving the sacks on too long.

THE PRESIDENT: That is a very good suggestion, Mr. Riehl. There might be some discussion of that. It occurs to me that with that method it is very essential you have the right kind of grafting wax, otherwise it might injure your bark. Are there any suggestions or questions before we finish the grafting demonstration?

MR. RIEHL: I wish to emphasize the fact that the wax must not be too hot.

THE PRESIDENT: What is your formula, Mr. Riehl?

MR. RIEHL: Four of resin, two of beeswax and one of linseed oil.

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further questions?

MR. DORR: Suppose I wanted to get a certain variety of tree by grafting. For instance if I couldn't buy the white Heath Cling peach then my only resource would be to bud on another tree. But suppose I struck a nursery where I could get good seedlings of this tree. Wouldn't a natural tree be preferable to the budded one?

THE PRESIDENT: There are no true seedlings, so far as I know.

MR. DORR: Do you mean there are none at all true to seed?

THE PRESIDENT: No, nut trees do not come true to variety. In other words, Mr. Dorr, I might put it this way. In the big Green River orchard over here there are some of the very best pecan trees, but those of us who have been observing them for years have found it is only through propagation we can get a Green River and a Major. It would be a failure to get the nuts and plant them and hope to get the varieties that exist there, just as it would to plant some nut that grows a hundred miles away, because the pollen up and down the river would mix in these varieties. It is the same way with the walnut, when you undertake to plant an English walnut and get it true to the seed, you are going to have a failure. If you plant a Rush walnut you may get a nut that resembles it but there is no probability of its being a true Rush walnut. That is why we have these discussions of budding and grafting. We should be glad if seedlings would come true but they do not. I will show you tomorrow, at Enterprise, the great variety of seedling pecans, and I want you to look them over well.

PROFESSOR SMITH: May I answer his question? I think he asked, which is better the tree from the nursery, the natural tree, or a grafted tree?

THE PRESIDENT: If he did, I didn't understand.

PROFESSOR SMITH: That was the question, and I will say he can't find a Heath Cling, unless it is top worked.

MR. DORR: Some farmers who have tried a great many experiments hold to this theory: If you select the seed properly you can produce fruit as good as the nurseries produce it. The things the schools teach don't coincide with what those practical farmers observe.

PROFESSOR SMITH: When you try to find farmers more practical than these men here, you have got some to find.

THE PRESIDENT: The farmer who says he can do that is mistaken.

MR. DORR: He says the same thing about you. When I buy a grafted tree a storm comes along and breaks it where it was grafted. If I can get a perfect seedling I will have a stronger tree.

MR. MCELDERRY: The very thing he is inquiring about has cost Posey County thousands of dollars. Men tell them they have trees that are better than the nurserymen sell and they bite and find they are mistaken. But they get them and pay from ten to fifteen cents more than they would to the dealer. There is no man on earth that can keep the Heath Cling true in that way, or any other variety on earth.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: I want to say a word. Two or three people have made the statement here that it is absolutely impossible to propagate any peach or other fruit true from seed. We have been doing it for years. I believe the orchard peach will come true to the seed. With apples there are groups that will come true to the group but not the variety.

THE PRESIDENT: I am glad to hear that statement. I have understood that the Indian peach will come true to that group but it will not be the big Indian peach you have planted. It is a fact that some of those groups have a tendency to come true to the group.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: Yes, they come true to the group and so will apples.

MR. DORR: May I ask another question? What has become of some of those beautiful, delicious seedlings in southern Indiana they had when I was a boy?

THE PRESIDENT: The same thing that became of Washington and Lincoln—they died.

MR. MCELDERRY: It is a boy's taste, not the peach, that makes it seem better than the ones we have now.

MR. W. C. REED: I feel that Mr. McCoy discouraged us too much about grafting. I think either method he used will succeed very well. The main point is the time of the year it is done. Up to a year ago we began grafting a few days after the first of April, and continued up to the first of May, and our success varied from ninety per cent to nothing. We decided there was too much sap and went to budding. The last grafting we did gave us the only real good stand we got, that which we did from the first to the tenth of May. We had as good results then as we did in budding.

THE PRESIDENT: That is good, Mr. Reed. I think those facts ought to be brought out and made a matter of a record.

MR. REED: I think it is more the time in grafting than anything else.

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Reed has a clay soil and that does not furnish the rapid flow of sap that a warm sandy soil does.

MR. REED: You would have to begin grafting earlier.

MR. MCCOY: Yes sir.

MR. WHITE: Do you leave that cover of paper on when you coves it with wax?

MR. REED: On part of them we did and on part of them we did not. In grafting walnut trees this season we left some of it on.

MR. WOODS: Just a question as to the strength of that slip grafting. Will it blow off easily?

MR. WHITE: The first year it will blow off a little bit easily. The first year you will have to tie it.

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further suggestions? If not the next thing on the program will be a talk by Dr. J. Russell Smith of the University of Pennsylvania.

PROFESSOR SMITH: Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: We have to educate the public—my good friend down by the window, I hope he will not take my remarks personally—is a case in point. He has come in with an argument, which the gentlemen next him says has cost his county lots of money. I am a grower of apples, an experimenter in nuts and I raise peaches to eat. I am planting seedling peaches and I know that when I go on that hillside of mine I can get little red seedling peaches and plant them and get the same kind, which have, I think, as much sugar and flavor as any big peach two inches or two and a half in diameter. I raise them true to the type too, but I would not think of putting out a commercial orchard of seedling peaches. My neighbor tried it, to his financial sorrow.

But it is surprising how this seedling error sticks. People are going to be buying seedling trees twenty-five years hence and thinking they are getting the best to be had. Here is an article that bears me out. Here is an editor who has published a very glaring thing. This is No. 139, Vol. 113 of a paper devoted primarily to ginseng. This question was asked: "What do you know about the Pomeroy English walnut trees and fruit?" and the editor answers: "The Pomeroy walnut trees are all right and you will find at least nineteen out of twenty hardy. That is what I find here and we often get it down to 20 below zero. The nuts are of good quality. Beware of the Pomeroy trees offered by the Rochester nurserymen. These are grafted trees. Pomeroy raises his trees on their own roots, all of them are true seedlings, and that is why once in a great while one turns out tender."



MR. DORR: I believe I am as old as you are and have gone the same gait exactly. I lost my job and went to farming. I was once a college professor, too, but there are things I find now I didn't find then. Two nurserymen come to me and sell me two Grimes Golden apples. I plant them side by side and they do not turn out alike. Why not if they are grafted trees? I am not knocking, you misunderstand me, I am a truth seeker.

PROFESSOR SMITH: I believe that. We always find something we didn't buy. My head man says they jump in. I have some very fine specimens that came by accident, and of course we have a certain amount of bud variation. We find variety even by propagation. The trees will vary the same as people will but they will vary a great deal more if we get the seedlings. The successful growth of nuts, as of any other fruit, demands the use of top worked trees from the best known parentage. That is the way we do with apples, peaches, pears, and cherries. Nuts will have to come in the same class from the best known parentage. The big thing today is to find out the best known parentage and then spread knowledge so that no editor will be capable of fooling people as in the article I read a few minutes ago.

That is point number one. My point number two is a different one. It is the question of the names of the varieties of northern nut trees, particularly the names of the pecan trees. Twenty years from now there will be a million people in the North who will gravely tell us the pecan grows down South, not in Indiana, and that you can't grow them up here. I haven't a doubt there will be a million people that will believe that twenty years hence. How can we get that idea out of their heads? I think we have an agency in the mere names of the trees which will cause people to buy more, yes a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand more trees, than they do at the present time. If we pick out one name, Indiana, what does it mean? It will make a man ask questions, and if he has any curiosity at all he will want to know if it grows in Indiana and if it will grow in any state with practically the same latitude as Indiana. But if he hears the name Schley, what does it mean? Nothing, because practically everybody has quit thinking about Admiral Schley. I recall eight varieties of northern pecans three of which have good names and three perfectly worthless ones. Indiana, Kentucky and Green River are the good ones. Green River is the least valuable because it is not well enough known. Indiana and Kentucky are great names because they are the names of great states. Then we have Busseron, Warrick, Posey and Buttrick. The Busseron nut which grows up at Vincennes ought to be renamed Vincennes. There will be thousands more sold in Vincennes when it is known from the name that it did not originate in Pennsylvania but that it is a product of Vincennes. My point is this, it gets a name that shows it to be a northern product. I am not going to fight for that particular name but it is growing at Vincennes and that is a perfectly good reason for it to be named after that well known city. Now we come to the Posey. It grows on the banks of the Wabash and ought to be named the Wabash. Nobody knows anything about Posey County and what the reason is for the name, but the banks of the Wabash where it grows have been made famous in song. We can hook a sign on that pecan that will sell twenty or thirty thousand more Poseys than are sold now. Next we have the Buttrick which is found growing in Illinois. That is the reason why those Buttrick pecans will sell under the name of Illinois. It is named for a man but it doesn't mean anything in the world but women's dress patterns and is not a good name for a pecan.

MR. MCCOY: A change in a name like Buttrick to Illinois is a good one. Any name like this that tells by itself the fact that the nut is from the North is worth a lot to the people who want to sell pecan trees, and to the people who want to eat pecans, and can buy them reasonably. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I move that a special committee be appointed to consider changing the names of these pecans and giving them names showing that they are northern nuts.

MR. POTTER: I second that motion.

THE PRESIDENT: It has been moved and seconded that a committee be appointed to consider the matter of changing the names of some of the pecans.

A MEMBER: Isn't there a Vincennes in Europe?

THE PRESIDENT: There might possibly be more suggestions, and we should be glad to hear from anyone along this line.

MR. REED: I agree with Professor Smith in part of his remarks. We have a walnut called the Ontario from Greene County, Michigan. If we should call it Michigan that would indicate where it came from. But it is widely known now as the Ontario, and would it be best to change its name, even though it comes from Michigan?

MR. MCCOY: Wouldn't it have been better to have called it Michigan to start with?

MR. REED: I think so.

MR. MCCOY: We have pursued these things for many years and we have made some misnomers in naming them. I think it's a good idea to change them.

MR. POTTER: I am very much pleased with the idea Professor Smith has advanced for renaming these trees. They don't mean anything now as he says, and I think it would be a great forward stride for this association to rename these trees.

MR. SIMPSON: I think Professor Smith's idea is a move in the right direction. We were the first people that propagated any of these northern varieties, and my idea is to call that variety Indiana, for the very reason he mentions here, that it distinguishes it as a northern variety. I think his suggestion ought to be followed out as far as it is possible. At least with several varieties.

THE PRESIDENT: The chair takes the opportunity of saying that the suggestion meets his most hearty approval. I have taken up pages of letters in writing to people about nuts, and explaining to them that the nursery from which they bought had nothing to do with the hardiness of the tree, that it was the location of the parent tree that determined this. I was struck by an advertisement last year which said, "buy them from the nursery furthest north." That hasn't a thing in the world to do with it. You may take some of this very wood we have here and propagate it on the McKenzie River, or the Yukon, and say you are selling trees propagated in Alaska, but the hardiness all depends on where the parent tree is. These parent trees have been placed there by nature, and when we distribute them we will distribute what nature has put into the parent tree. These trees are there because they have withstood all the climatic conditions, and nothing would be of more value, it appears to me, than to adopt the suggestion for renaming them. In the first place many of these trees are named for men not entitled to have them named for them. Many of those who own these trees do not know their value and object to anyone that knows anything about a nut tree going in and getting bud wood, and are contrary and mean about it. It is very rare that the importance of these seedling pecans is known to their owners, and they are not entitled to any consideration themselves. They are generally discovered by some outsider who had to beg to go in and get a stick of bud wood. Is there any further discussion?

MR. C. A. REED: You are right about that. But I would like to go on record in opposition to this movement. When pecans are recorded in the standard works the names stay. The rule is generally accepted that where the names have once been recorded no other name can be permitted. It is easy enough for us to vote to change a name but not so easy to change it in actual practice. How many of us will know these pecans that Prof. Smith has mentioned by any other names than those that have already been accepted. Suppose we do rename them, we shall have to explain that they are the old pecans under the new names.

MR. MCCOY: We remember well when we changed the name of the Green River. We decided that among ourselves here. The Posey pecan used to be the Grayville and you know when we changed it. I call it the Grayville yet because I got used to that. You changed it to Posey thinking it was from Posey County but it really is from Gibson County. I have no doubt many of these men here call it the Grayville, and then lots of men that hear me call it the Grayville ask me what I mean as they don't recognize it under the old name. I am in favor of changing these names. I named some of them and you know it, but I didn't always name them right and you have changed them here. Can't we do it again if it will sell them?

THE SECRETARY: What is the motion exactly?

THE PRESIDENT: As I understood it was to appoint a special committee to take up the matter, and consider changing these names.

THE SECRETARY: Why should we do that when we have already a committee on nomenclature? What is the use of a special committee?

MR. POTTER: The special committee will report quicker.

THE PRESIDENT: If it belongs to the committee on nomenclature to consider the matter it will be best to do it now, immediately. If the names are to be changed they ought not go another year, and if not to be changed it ought to be known. The chair will be glad to entertain a motion that the committee report tomorrow on it.

MR. POTTER: I make a motion that the matter be referred to the committee on nomenclature and that they be ordered to report tomorrow.

THE PRESIDENT: Do I hear a second?

A MEMBER: I second the motion.

C. A. REED: I am the chairman of that committee and I could not report tomorrow so I will ask that if it is to be taken up by committee that a special committee be appointed.

THE PRESIDENT: It is Mr. W. C. Reed who is the chairman of that committee, to which committee was added C. A. Reed and R. L. McCoy.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: I would like to ask Mr. Reed if he is absolutely sure about the rule he has just quoted of the American Pomological Society, that a name cannot be changed. I don't remember that rule.

MR. REED: Mr. Taylor was the framer of that rule and in actual practice he has adhered to the first name used, and did at the time he was secretary of that society.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: Have you not in mind the rule that a name like Posey being given this variety no other variety can be given that same name. I think that is the rule you are thinking of.

MR. REED: No, but that is true too. You know we had the Sovereign pecan, and after that name had been established Mr. Taylor wrote up that variety for the yearbook, and the name had been changed then to the Texas Prolific, but he still retained the name of Sovereign for the reason that it had been called that before.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: It seems to me that an organization could change a name. I think the idea is a good one. Take the name Indiana. I think that name ought to be given to the very best seedling variety that is a native of that state. I don't know whether the Indiana is the best one or not, but it is now too late to change that. If it is not the best the name will have to stick to the variety to which it has been given, even if later on better varieties are found.

MR. MCCOY: I know there are some extremely fine pecans on the Illinois River because I have some samples of them, a good bit better than the ones we have, and I suggest that we reserve the name Illinois, which would be suggestive of both the river and the state, for one of them. I know the nuts are there and I think they are very fine. The Illinois River has more pecans on it than the Wabash.

DR. DEMING: I second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: It has been moved and seconded that the matter of changing the names of these nuts as suggested by Dr. Smith, be referred to the committee on nomenclature, and that they be instructed to report tomorrow.

(Motion carried.)

THE PRESIDENT: We have with us this afternoon, the state entomologist, Mr. Baldwin, who knows many things of interest to nut growers, and we shall be glad to hear from him.

MR. BALDWIN: Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Nut Growers Association: I am wholly unprepared to make a talk before this association and must say I am not sufficiently familiar with nut culture to be able to tell you anything of interest along that line of work. Your discussion relative to the pollenization of plants was intensely interesting and clear. There is no use in trying to dodge the fact that every plant has a father and mother, and that father and mother also have fathers and mothers, the same as we have. The reason I am not just the same as you is because I have a different father and mother, and the reason I am not just the same as my brother is because the characteristics of the parent may show in one individual and not another. If your pecan trees should stand out in an isolated situation and pollenate themselves the individual nuts would not all be the same. We have peaches that come nearly true to name, and the same is true of the Snow apple that has been grown in the St. Lawrence valley for generations. The pollenization of budded and grafted fruit trees or nut trees is brought about, in my opinion, wholly by the surroundings or environment of that tree. The well known experiments of the Geneva Experiment Station have very satisfactorily proved that the variety does not change except in so far as the environment changes it. Of course there are some things in nature we do not understand as where very decided deviations, or wholly distinct varieties arise; but the general rule holds, that whenever you propagate trees, and get your buds from some variety having merits, those merits will be transferred to the trees that are budded or grafted, and will remain in them while the surrounding conditions remain the same, and changes in the fruit will be effected only by changes in the locations in which the trees grow.

I suppose that as I am the entomologist of this state you expected to hear some discussion of things of interest to you in this particular field, but I came wholly unprepared for that. In this state so far as the nut growers industry is concerned we have not done anything at all. There is a large field for work but I must confess I am wholly unprepared to give you a talk on this subject. Where I was raised, back in Pennsylvania, we have several well known bugs that the nut growers have to contend with, and they are especially abundant with the chestnut. That of course would not be of so much interest to the people of this state until the chestnut growing industry has developed more than at present. I am very glad to be with you and the discussions I have heard have been very interesting.

THE PRESIDENT: We are very glad to have heard from the state entomologist and we want his assistance. We are trying to steer away from bugs and we want his suggestions and help at any time.

We have a number of interesting people on the program yet this afternoon, but the chair is going to take the liberty of asking the president of the National Nut Growers Association, Dr. C. A. Van Duzee to talk to us on any subject that he cares to discuss. I know him well enough to know that anything he says will be good enough to hear: I know him personally, the most of you know him by reputation. He has some pictures here, and I shall take the liberty of passing them around for you to look at, and I am going to say that these are pictures it certainly does my heart good to see. They are pictures of his orchard down South. Just pass them around please.

COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I told your President the first thing when I got in this morning that I didn't care to have any place on the program; that I would be glad to talk at any time on any subject he wished me to, and do anything I could to help along. That puts me in bad to start with. As I have listened to the discussions of your meeting the thought has come to me that you are following along very much the same pathway that the southern nut growers traversed five or six or seven years ago. We are a little further along in the growing of nut orchards in the South, but you are certainly going to get along and be abreast of us in time. Perhaps I may be able to do more good if I confine myself to a few practical suggestions as to how I think nut orchards can best be produced. Those pictures represent an orchard which I have in southwestern Georgia and have grown under adverse conditions. The pictures show the culmination of years of earnest effort. They represent what I consider to be a very reasonable success from a practical standpoint. I am a farmer and the first thing I require of my farm is that it shall pay. I have no theories; I have no ideals but those which must stand that test. I am in farming to make it a success; it is my business and everything I do must stand that test. If it doesn't pay it is not successful. That orchard represents the culmination of years of study of the problem of how to grow a pecan orchard on my ranch. That bunch of hogs represents about one hundred and fifty we selected about three weeks ago to put in our early peanut patch down there to finish them up as pork, but it does not show my breeders or young stock. I could talk hogs to you until the cows come home. I set my mark a year ago last spring, after being twice wiped out by the cholera, I set my mark at fifty thousand pounds of meat from my orchard, and I want to say I have animals now in the orchard and in the peanut field together to make that and a little margin to the good. I expect our orchard will produce this year more than fifty thousand pounds of hams, bacon and lard. The reason I am talking about this is that I want to emphasize the fact that the growing of nut trees is a business proposition. I want to say, in passing, that I believe no better thing could happen to the people who live in America than that every man who owns land might plant a few nut trees. It is a notorious fact that the nut trees which do the best, and which make the most money for the man who plants them, are the ones planted in the garden and immediately about the home where the conditions are favorable for the best development. It is also true that all the successful pecan promotions that have been put over on the American people have been built upon the records of those individual trees, which were grown under the most favorable conditions. That is the source of all that magnificent literature, and all these people that have been inveigled into these promotions in the South are going to be disappointed. That orchard in the photographs is eight years of age, or will be this year, as it was planted seven years ago last February. It has never paid a dollar of profit. You won't find any literature on nut orcharding in the South that will convey any such impression as that. I do expect it to pay this fall a small margin of profit. I won't attempt to explain all that but will say that an orchard must be eight or ten years of age before you may expect or hope for a reasonable profit. After that it ought to pay well. It is well worth going after because it is one of the most legitimate, safe, satisfactory business opportunities we have ever found. I don't know anything that pleases me more as a business man than the growing of a large orchard of nut trees, and I assure you, gentlemen, you must bring to that orchard the same degree of skill, energy and patience that must be brought into any large business proposition to make it a success. My own idea is that the nut orchard is a legitimate part of the general farming operation. If you travel from one end to the other of this country you will see that it is covered with apple orchards. Small apple orchards were a part of the original farming operations. The fact that they have been neglected does not alter the situation at all. If the owners of those orchards had given them proper growing conditions, they would have been successful. In the same way I say the successful nut orchard is going to be a legitimate part of the general farming operation.

I want to talk to you a few minutes from a business standpoint. Suppose you want to plant an acre of nut trees, and you buy an acre of land, and you buy your trees and have them planted. Who is going to take care of them? You hire a man who knows about the care of trees. You couldn't afford to hire one who didn't, and you would expect him to put in part of his time some other way. If he didn't your investment would amount up to so much you couldn't make anything on the deal. I emphasize this fact because I believe you should make your nut orchard propositions large enough so that you could afford to hire the best men to handle them for you. If you can't do this there is another way which has been practiced a great deal in the South and which I hope to see practiced in this section. I have worked out a solution of the problem, which I believe is very promising, and it is this: Get enough men, for instance in the city of Evansville, who want nut orchards, to go out a few miles and buy a bunch of farms, and put those farms under the management of a man big enough to make them a success, then plant your orchard, and use the land for general farming operations as well. I could go on indefinitely along this line because it is inexhaustible. I think it is the keynote to success in growing nuts. You can't be successful without giving attention also to the things I talked about this morning. You have to analyze the root pasture and the soil. You have to observe from the time the trees are bought and delivered, and it requires the most careful attention. You can't hope to accomplish a thing like that until you do give it your most careful attention. If you have money of your own, or make your living in some other way while the trees are growing, and feel that you must delegate it to somebody else, associate with yourself other men and make the undertaking big enough so you can hire the very best talent the country affords. In this section of the country land I presume is worth a hundred to two hundred dollars an acre, and you have got to make it pay interest. I want to talk about the figures. The farmer or nut grower, who does not keep a set of books and can't tell you at the end of the year whether he has made enough money to pay off his bills and legitimate expenses, and allowing himself a compensation for the time energy and experience put in the business, is not successful, and I don't care to consider him, because he is not a farmer as I see him. You must keep your figures and know how you stand. Before I get to the photographs I want to go back to our convention at Chattanooga. I don't know whether there is anybody here that was at that meeting or not. I was third man on the program to respond to the address of welcome by the mayor of the city, and I was new in the nut game and new in the South. I went up there with this thought, "I will listen to the other fellows, and take my cue from them, and make a little bluff at doing the best I can under the circumstances." To make a long story short, when the president called on the other two men to respond they were not there and that left me with an audience of four or five hundred people to talk to and nothing much to say. I apologized to them for being unable to talk in a light way. I said, "I can't say anything unless it is in earnest; I have got to talk about something I am interested in." I went on to advocate this principle, and it is a principle I wish every man or woman in America would grasp and retain and put in execution today; that is that the calling of agriculture is the most honorable calling a man can follow, and it is up to us to inspire in the children of America the thought that such is the case, and help them in every way to go out into the field of agriculture and be successful farmers. That is what I want to say. I have no patience with the men who farm and are not successful business men, because they are the people that make life in the rural districts objectionable to the children, and are responsible for the children of the best blood in the country going into the turmoil of the city where it is largely lost. You have to pay interest on the land you use, and you have got to pay yourself a fair compensation for the brains and energy you use on it. I want to call your attention to one other thing. This farm I bought nine years ago from a man who had farmed it until it wasn't capable of producing enough income to enable him to keep it, and I undertook to build an orchard on that farm, and I have done it. Last October, where these hogs are grazing in the picture, I planted a crop of oats and I got forty bushels of oats to the acre the latter part of April. I then turned around and broke the land up and planted it in sweet potatoes, which are just maturing and the crop will run one hundred and fifty bushels to the acre. Don't forget that that is two crops grown and harvested in one year on the same land. I consider it the best treatment for the land. I pastured the oats last winter with the hogs, so I got a very material gain from the oats in that way, and as soon as my sweet potatoes are harvested I will turn the hogs back in and let them glean the field. It is a fact that we can make lots of pork on the gleanings of a sweet potato field. And besides that these trees, each one of them, will bring me four, to five, or six dollars' worth of nuts. That land cost me sixteen dollars an acre, and there is a net income of several dollars above the price of the land, and I presume there is an individual growth on each tree that increases its value at least four or five dollars worth of nuts. There you see I have several dollars' worth of nuts, the sweet potatoes and the oats all grown on the same land, besides the pasture for the hogs. Those things are possible to the man who will go into the growing of a nut orchard in a business way. I have other land adjoining this and I will also utilize it for these purposes and grow such crops as I can grow in the orchard, because when the nut crop is ready to gather, I must get the stock out. I keep my organization employed the whole year. I have the best superintendent I know of and I have to make his salary out of my business. I get the best tree man I know of and he also receives his compensation from the money I make in farming. Last year I extended my farming operations in order to make it possible for me to keep my organization running full speed three hundred days in the year. I am dwelling upon this line for this purpose. Don't let any promoters ever get his hooks into you or tell you things as we have had them told to us down there. Thousands and thousands of acres of pecan orchards have been planted without a thought of the things I am talking about. They have planted thousands of acres in Georgia; they have not any organization and the man in charge is inexperienced and they don't pay. Each year from the time I planted my orchard, and got it to the point where I could count on an orchard crop, it has increased in value, and today it is worth four or five dollars a tree above what it cost me. It is a magnificent business proposition. I am so in love with my work I could talk to you until the cows come home. I want to impress on the people of the Northern Nut Growers Association and their friends the one fact that in order to be successful in a commercial way you must go into it right. There is no short cut.

THE PRESIDENT: The next on the program will be an article by Mr. Olcott.



THE FUNCTION OF THE CLASS JOURNAL

RALPH T. OLCOTT, Editor "American Nut Journal"

In the multiplicity of publications one must distinguish, for his use, those which are for entertainment or general education and those which specialize. Class publications differ from trade or professional publications in that they are not confined in their appeal to the members of a trade or profession. The class publication is for that portion of the general public which is wholly, or to a certain degree, interested in the particular object to which it is devoted.

What has been said with regard to class publications is probably understood in a general way, but a brief consideration of its bearing upon the nut industry may make the status of a nut journal clearer. Let us suppose that an industry has no publication devoted especially to it. It must then depend upon communications between individuals and upon annual meetings and their printed proceedings for its interchange of thought; for it is presumed that it will have a national or sectional organization. A very efficient organization with the means at hand to serve its members well can do a great deal to keep members in touch with each other and to advance the interests of the industry. Organization, of course, is essential; but without a periodical exponent there is lacking the advantage to all readers of general timely discussion, questions asked and answered, special articles, illustrations and the news relating exclusively to the industry—all of which makes the periodical a working tool, and its bound and indexed files an almost indispensable adjunct to the literature and reference storehouse of the field covered.

Not only to the individual, but also to the class association do these characteristics appeal with special force. For, unlike the trade journal, it goes out among the general public as a factor in the education of those who seek information of the special kind. In this way it is a means for extending the operation of the industry, and consequently of increasing the membership and influence of the association. And right here is a point which those who have been operating in the industry for some time should consider. If any portion of the general public is to receive through the class journal the information desired, there must of necessity appear in the journal from time to time statistical or other matter with which the experienced nut grower is familiar. To a considerable extent the novice may be referred to existing literature on a special subject; but not all of such literature is readily available. For instance, the American Nut Journal has been carrying in each issue a summary of the figures showing the progress of the American nut industry. These figures have been seen repeatedly by experienced growers, but even for them they may prove convenient for reference; and certainly to the newcomer they should be interesting and valuable. Original matter, of course, must be the basis upon which the contents of a class publication are built. But an article, or a portion of an article, which has an important bearing on the specialty under consideration may often be reproduced in the class publication, even though it may have appeared elsewhere; for we are all too busy to read many publications, and the chief purpose of the class publication is to assemble from all sources that which particularly relates to the subject. In theory at least the class journal should be the storehouse to which in its bound and indexed form the subscriber may go for information on any phase of the special subject. That is a high and not altogether attainable ideal, but the nearer the journal approaches to that aim the more valuable will it be to its subscribers. It should at least record the sources of all information on its special subject, even if it cannot present it all.

What has here been said in outline regarding the function of the class journal will indicate to the nut grower the place the American Nut Journal should occupy in the development of nut culture. It is unnecessary to say that co-operation between the editor and those in the industry is essential, and for that reason all should feel free to exchange views through this medium. Aside from the practical benefit it may be to the individual, it is a constant source of publicity for the organized effort represented in an association of nut growers—and it is through publicity that an industry develops.

To deserve the co-operation of all in the industry the management of the class publication representing it must determine what is the highest and largest function of the field which it serves and then strive in every legitimate way to promote that function.

To deserve the manifold advantages which such a publication affords it is incumbent upon those in the industry, on their part, to make it possible through their subscriptions and through their advertising to maintain such a medium. It is probable that if there were no such publication every loyal member of this association would gladly pledge ten cents a month provided some one could be found who would expend the time and effort to provide it. Just that opportunity has been presented, and it is a pleasure to say that many have appreciated it.

* * * * *

THE PRESIDENT: There is no one thing that would get results for you better than a good periodical. The Department of Agriculture issues bulletins but that department cannot go into the journal business, the business of publishing my opinion or someone else's opinion. The Department of Agriculture must confine itself to the summaries of facts, and that leaves a gap that must be filled in by some good periodical properly edited. It is with great pleasure that we see the American Nut Journal which Mr. Olcott is putting out and attempting to give us the best he can get. The chair will be glad to hear any further suggestions on this subject.

W. C. Reed: I think we are very fortunate in having a journal of this kind, and having known Mr. Olcott for a number of years I know he is giving the people a good journal. I think it is customary in most instances for all trade organizations to have their journal, and I think in this case the Northern Nut Growers Association ought to adopt The American Nut Journal as their official organ. I make that as a motion.

MR. MCCOY: I second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: It has been moved and seconded that we adopt The American Nut Journal as the official organ of our association.

(Motion unanimously carried.)

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. W. C. Reed, you have something on the program and we will be glad to hear from you now.

MR. REED: I had prepared a short paper on top working the black walnut with the Persian or English walnut but I won't read the paper on account of the limited time, for there are others here we would rather hear from. Quite a number of you are going to Vincennes and you can ask questions there and understand it better than I can tell you here. However there may be some that can't go along, so any questions you want to ask at this time I will be glad to answer.

MR. POTTER: It will be impossible for me to go to Vincennes on Saturday as I have to go home tomorrow night. I would like to ask Mr. Reed if the method of grafting the pecan is the same as top working the black walnut?

MR. REED: Yes sir. Suppose this is a large tree twelve, eighteen or twenty inches in diameter. We cut the limbs back to where they are four or five inches in diameter and, supposing that we want to graft this limb here, we will cut it up here one or two feet because it is hard to cut limbs without their splitting. Sometimes they will split on both sides. For that reason we cut them high and then again, later, back to where we want to graft. We usually find it best to do the first cutting back along the latter part of February or first of March, and when it gets time to do our grafting we cut them off again about two inches so that we shall have fresh wood. We saw them with a fine tooth saw. We prefer to do our grafting from about the first to the tenth of May. We keep scions in cold storage. I think that is quite an advantage although I haven't tried the walnut in cold storage until this year and hadn't thought very much about it until the last few years: but we find the ones we were most successful with were the ones we had kept in cold storage.

PROFESSOR SMITH: What time were they cut?

MR. REED: In February, I think, but I think it would be much better if they were cut in November or early December, especially the walnut, and I shall do that this year. With the pecans I don't think it will make any difference.

PROFESSOR SMITH: What temperature in storage do you use?



MR. REED: Ordinary apple storage, thirty-two to thirty-eight, or freezing. This spring we grafted between the first and tenth of May; some of the trees were in full leaf. The sap was flowing very readily and they bled very freely, although the ones that had been cut back early would not bleed like the ones you cut when you are ready to graft. In grafting we used the wedge graft, splitting straight down and placing three or four scions on each limb three or four inches in diameter. However the method we like the best is the slip bark method, but we have had fairly good results with both methods. Of the trees we grafted this spring 60 to 75 per cent were grafted from cold storage scions. We used some that had not been in cold storage, and we didn't get them to grow. We wax the grafts thoroughly and cover them with paper sacks. We do not use any tying on the large limbs as we don't find it necessary. However, we have done more budding than grafting in top working large trees and I think it is a little surer, but we have been fairly successful with both. For budding we cut them back the same as if we were going to graft. We let the sprouts grow until about the middle of July or first or middle of August, and we have let them go as late as the first of September. Then they are ready for budding. We follow about the same method as has been demonstrated. In working large trees it is very important that you keep all cuts waxed thoroughly with grafting wax.

MR. MCCOY: Have you had this experience, that English walnuts will produce female blooms before they do the male blooms?

MR. REED: We haven't had them long enough to determine that clearly. We have eight trees and four of them produced pistillate blooms and we had to bring pollen to pollenize them.

MR. MCCOY: It is possible to have your sprouts almost where you want them by taking the sharp end of an old file and dressing the bark carefully. The buds are more apt to come there than anywhere.

MR. REED: We sometimes lose a good many shoots from storms. One tree was budded about three weeks ago and that storm about ten days ago broke every one of them.

MR. POMEROY: What time did you say to bud the black walnut?

MR. REED: About the first of August, from the middle of July to the middle of August, as a rule. We are budding some yet. That depends on the wood; do it when the wood is ripe enough. We are holding back on some now to get the wood ripe enough, and as fast as they get ripe enough we bud them. You can bud them late if you cut them back freely in the spring, smooth with the ground. Then your buds will take much more rapidly because you have the sap.

MR. MCCOY: Have you had the best success when you cut your trees back in the pruning season? In slip bark grafting there are two ways, you know. One is to wait until you are ready to graft and then cut back. Which do you think is the best?

MR. REED: In top working the large trees we had the best success cutting back early, that is in the nursery. We have never cut back any at the time we were ready to do the work.

MR. MCCOY: In other words you head off the sap flow?

MR. REED: Yes sir, we hold it back.

J. F. WILKINSON: Do you find it any advantage to cut your leaflets off before you bud?

MR. REED: I haven't tried that enough to know. When you were at our place some of them had been trimmed in full leaf and had dropped the leaf stalk, and some had been cut off three weeks and still didn't let loose. We can tell more next spring as I kept a record of that.

MR. POMEROY: How do you know when it is ripe enough?

MR. REED: I don't think a man lives who knows exactly. You have to use your own judgment. For instance, when bud wood colors up like this I would feel sure it was ripe enough. When it is green I am more afraid of it, although we have some good success with the green wood, but cold storage wood is still better.

DR. MORRIS: Professor Van Deman said the other day that in cutting bud wood at this time of year it is good to give the bud rest for two or three days. He cuts the scions and puts them in the ice house. That gives them rest and the buds start better and are firmer. Has anyone had experience with that way?

MR. DORR: There is another question I want to ask. If we want to experiment with the processes that have been suggested here, shouldn't Evansville have a place where we can store scions? We should have an ice house. Some of us who don't have shoes, haven't any ice house. I worked in South Carolina one time and made this discovery, and it almost made me weak. The great majority of farmers in South Carolina are men who make fifty dollars a year; they cultivate three acres and own a mule in partnership with two or three other men. Suppose some enthusiast like this man plants an orchard there. What inducement has he for that kind of work? The dream I have had here for Evansville, which is my home, is to bring some of that kind of work into the high schools.

MR. WHITE: In regard to the point brought out by Dr. Morris about cold storage bud wood, I believe that it is better for being chilled. We have found it hastens the callous. The same theory has been borne out by the work of the Department of Agriculture in propagating the blueberry. They found it would not callous and form roots unless they chilled it. Isn't that right, Mr. Close?

PROFFESSOR CLOSE: I don't remember that.

MR. WHITE: I think all wood must be frozen or chilled, or put in cold storage, before it will take well. I found that by putting scions in cold storage they callous much more readily. Where the temperature is near the freezing point walnut and pecan wood will callous more readily. On some that I took out on the 31st of July I had written the names, and the callous had formed until we could scarcely read the names. In a week or ten days the callous was around them. On new wood, it would take twice as long.

PROFESSOR SMITH: If they had calloused in cold storage was it because they had been too warm?

MR. WHITE: No sir. If you will take a tree that you want to set out and cover the roots until you can set it out, you will find the callous forming no matter if the ground is frozen hard.

PROFESSOR SMITH: You mean a tree planted in the fall?

MR. WHITE: Yes sir.

MR. POMEROY: Where one had no cold storage what would he do?

THE PRESIDENT: If you haven't cold storage, such as Evansville affords, and have an ice house you can use that. It is very important to pack the scions in excelsior and sawdust and be sure there is very slight moisture, and to paper line your boxes. Colonel Sober keeps chestnut scions by standing them on end in cans. He fills in with a thin layer of sawdust, punches holes for them to breathe, puts a lid on and sets them in the ice house and says they keep splendidly.

PROFESSOR SMITH: In an ordinary ice house?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes sir.

COLONEL SOBER: I have kept them that way for two years.

MR. WHITE: Dr. Morris will tell you the next best thing if you haven't cold storage.

DR. MORRIS: We use a method I got from Professor Craig, the way he kept his for many years. His plan was to set a plain wooden box very smoothly on the ground, smooth off the ground so the box would set evenly on all sides, then pack in a layer of perhaps half an inch of fine leaves like black locust leaves, and on that he would put a single layer of scions, then, more leaves and scions.

MR. MOSELEY: If you have an ordinary ice box, would that be cold enough to put the buds in?

DR. MORRIS: I think that would be plenty cold enough. I know of a man in Maryland that has been using that for a number of years.

THE SECRETARY: Do you wax the ends?

DR. MORRIS: Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't.

THE PRESIDENT: You couldn't keep your scions all the time in an ice box, could you?

DR. MORRIS: No, not for any length of time, but just for a few days you could, in an ordinary refrigerator.

THE PRESIDENT: When you cut your scions in the winter for future use, you should keep them down pretty close to freezing. I used scions in Maryland this spring cut last February in this locality. We put them in cold storage and kept them there until April. Then they were taken out and shipped to me in Washington. They arrived in perfect condition and I took them to a big green house across the street and put them in a long box and set them up in the big refrigerator where they kept their buds. I had these within two inches of a thousand pounds of ice and the Green River proceeded to grow within two weeks. You have to keep them in cold storage. It is so cheap, however, in Evansville that there is no excuse not to keep them in perfect condition. These cold storage people here, Holt & Brandon, are very fine people. We have kept very large amounts of bud wood there and their charges have been very small.

Before we get through I want to call your attention to the rest of the program. Immediately after adjournment there will be automobiles waiting to take all who want to go sight seeing in Evansville. This is by the courtesy of the Evansville Business Association. I want especially again to call your attention to the lecture tonight by Mr. C. A. Reed, and for fear that those here may have an idea that it will be strictly technical I wish to say that he will avoid technicalities as far as possible. He has one of the finest collections of lantern slides I have ever seen. He will take you to the walnut regions of California and to nut regions all over the United States. Any questions asked him will be cheerfully answered but I would suggest that unless there is something extremely important, you reserve your questions until the conclusion of his talk and not interrupt unnecessarily because there are a great many slides to get through with. Those of you who are here, come tonight and bring your friends, bring the ladies and children and everybody else, because it will be interesting and educative generally. Do not forget that we leave in the morning at 7:15, not 16, nor 26; that car will leave at 7:15 and if you will be there on time we can got together on the car. We will now adjourn until 8 o'clock.

* * * * *

Meeting re-convened at 8:00 P. M.

THE PRESIDENT: The first thing on the program will be an invitation to join the association. For the purposes of our organization we need members, and we especially need anyone who has any interest whatever in nut culture. The membership of persons joining now will expire on the 31st day of December, 1914; the membership dues are $2 per year, which includes a copy of the annual report. By joining now you get this report and the three preceding ones.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: Mr. Chairman, may I say something regarding the annual report?

THE PRESIDENT: We will be glad to hear you, Professor Close.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: It seems to me that those who pay dues for 1914 ought to receive the report of the meeting for 1914 no matter when it is printed, even if it is not for three or four months after the end of the calendar year. In that way the reports will match the calendar year; that is they are the reports for the year that the meeting was held and the papers and discussions took place, and this one should be known as the report for 1914. That is the way we run them in the other societies and it seems to me there would be no confusion at all if it were managed in that way.

THE PRESIDENT: The chair very heartily agrees with that suggestion and thinks that should be the practice of the society. The chair would be very glad to entertain a motion to make that the rule.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: I should be glad to make the motion that the proceedings of the meeting of each calendar year be reported as of that calendar year and distributed to the members who pay dues for that calendar year.

(Seconded and carried unanimously.)

THE PRESIDENT: Are there any other candidates for admission to this society? If so, hold up your hands and our distinguished secretary will visit you immediately. Are there any committee reports?

W. C. REED: The committee on nomenclature desires to report as follows:

Voted on the Smith and Potter resolution to recommend changing the name of the Busseron pecan to Vincennes; Posey pecan to Wabash; Buttrick pecan to Illinois. It was the opinion of the committee that the other names of pecans had been established by the Department of Agriculture by printing in the year book, and that it was not advisable to change them.

We recommend, as advisable for members introducing new varieties, to confer with the committee on nomenclature before listing new names.

Signed. W. C. REED, W. C. DEMING, R. L. MCCOY, R. T. MORRIS, C. A. REED.



A MEMBER: I move the adoption of this report.

A MEMBER: I second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: It has been moved and seconded that the report of the committee on nomenclature be adopted. Are you ready for the question? All in favor of the motion make it known in the usual way. It is unanimously carried that we adopt this report. Are there any other committee reports?

PROFESSOR CLOSE: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The committee on exhibits has not had a very arduous duty, because we can't have at this time of year very extensive exhibits. But what we have are very interesting. Mr. W. C. Reed has an exhibit of English walnuts, hickory nuts and hardy almonds. You have all noticed the exhibits he has in the glass case. That is very instructive and is put up in such a way that it can be carried from place to place. He also has some photographs of trees. Mr. Wilkinson has an exhibit of fruiting limbs of shagbark hickory and pecans, and various seedlings. To some of us some of those things are almost new. Colonel Sober has an exhibit of grafted chestnut trees. He also has the burrs and in glass jars he has the nuts. Then there is quite an exhibit of the native varieties made by our president, which is very fine. There are also some persimmons. I think, everything considered, the society is to be congratulated upon the quality of the exhibits even though the quantity is not so very great.

THE PRESIDENT: If there is no objection the report of the committee on exhibits will be adopted. The report is adopted. Are there any further committee reports?

MR. POTTER: The committee on resolutions reports as follows:

Resolved, That we extend our thanks to the Mayor and the Citizens of Evansville, Indiana, for the courteous entertainment they have favored us with, and for the excellent facilities that they have placed at our disposal.

Second—That we extend to the Evansville Business Association, and to the members thereof, our deep appreciation of their entertainment and courteous treatment that they have extended to our association.

Third—That we extend our deep appreciation and gratitude to Hon. T. P. Littlepage, our president, and Dr. W. C. Deming, our secretary, for their untiring and valuable services in behalf of this association.

Fourth—That we express the thanks of the association to its members and others who have attended this meeting, and helped to make it a success.

Fifth—That we especially extend our thanks and appreciation to Mr. C. A. Reed of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, D. C., and to Col. C. K. Sober, for their excellent lectures and special work in behalf of this association at this meeting.

Sixth—That we express our most sincere thanks and appreciation to J. F. Wilkinson, for his courteous treatment and entertainment of this association at his home.

Seventh—Be it further resolved, that we especially thank each and every individual member of this association, for their attendance at this meeting, and for their earnest efforts and interest in behalf of the same, in helping to make this meeting a success in every way, and making it the most enthusiastic meeting that has ever been held by this association, and we thank any and all members for any special work or research that has been carried on by said member in behalf of this association, as disclosed by this meeting.

Eighth—Resolved, That we extend to Mr. W. C. Reed our sincere thanks for his kind invitation to the members of the association to be his guests at his home in Vincennes, Indiana, on Saturday, August 22d, 1914.

Signed. W. O. POTTER, H. R. WEBER, J. RUSSELL SMITH.



THE PRESIDENT: If there are no objections, the report of the committee on resolutions will be adopted. It is so ordered. The next thing on the program will be the lecture and lantern slides by Mr. C. A. Reed.

* * * * *

Meeting called to order at Enterprise, on Friday, August 21, at 10:30 A. M.

THE PRESIDENT: I want the records to show that this meeting convened in Enterprise, Luce Township, Spencer County, Indiana, where the members of the Northern Nut Growers Association visited and studied the native Ohio River pecan trees, and I want to hear the opinions of the different visitors. The state entomologist, Mr. Baldwin, will please express himself upon the native pecan trees on the Ohio River.

MR. BALDWIN: My remarks will be so brief it will not be necessary for me to go forward. I don't know that it is necessary for me to mention the fact that I have never lived in and very seldom visited, localities where pecans grow in this state and cannot, therefore, express an authoritative opinion as to the merits and demerits of the pecan trees in this section. It is noticeable that the trees are more free from insects and fungus trouble than trees in many places. Mr. Simpson, who has had considerable experience in the South, called my attention to a very destructive pest that does not exist here in numbers sufficient to be destructive, as it is in Florida, but he is of the opinion that it was introduced into that section from this section.

MR. PRESIDENT: What is it?

MR. BALDWIN: Mr. Simpson says—I didn't see any of the insects, and probably you couldn't identify it without labor,—but Mr. Simpson says there are two broods and the second brood is now at work. This certainly is a good field for work for the entomologist. Of course the same thing would hold true with this insect that is true of others; when a new species is introduced into a country where it has not heretofore existed, where the natural parasites are not found, it is more destructive than where the natural parasites exist. That point is illustrated very well by the moths that are so very destructive in New England, and don't do very much damage in the countries from which they come. From my observations on other native nut trees I was greatly impressed with the abundance of nuts that some of the native trees bear here. I am sorry I am not able to talk about something that would be more interesting to those interested in pecans and other nuts.

THE CHAIRMAN: I should be glad to have our secretary put in the record a few of his observations.

DR. DEMING: Mr. Littlepage has been talking to us about these pecans since we started this organization, and has long promised to show us these trees. We can't get any idea of such trees without seeing them. We have had many word pictures of them but I had not been able to form any idea of how great they are. They have a beautiful outline as we see it silhouetted against the sky, and every evidence of being trees that bear lots of nuts, which is the kind of trees we are all looking for. We don't have the pecan tree in the North as a native at all. There are a few in New England, a few scattered here and there, but none bearing. I have heard of a pecan not far from my home, possibly twenty-five miles, that does not bear. I have seen in the city of Hartford a pecan tree that was nine feet and three inches in circumference and ninety feet high, of unknown origin, but not bearing. The nut tree that grows best through our part of the country is the shagbark hickory. It is very much like the pecan tree here, but never grows to anything like its size, is not nearly so beautiful a tree and I don't believe it bears as heavily. I think the average hickory nuts there are very much inferior to the average pecan here. We also haven't the black walnut there as a native. That is I have never seen it native though it probably was originally so in parts of the country. However, when planted it grows to a very large size, and makes a magnificent tree. About ten miles from my house is the largest in the state. We have lots of butternuts over the country but no nut tree that compares in beauty and usefulness with the pecan here.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Smith should be able to size up the situation and give us some of his impressions. I want to get them in the record.

DR. SMITH: Gentlemen, I don't see how anybody can live by these trees here and not realize that they are a source of fortune. I can't understand how men can look at them every year, gather and sell the nuts and not realize that they are a source of livelihood. I just measured a big tree in a tobacco field down the road that was thirteen feet and eleven inches in circumference, that had a sixty foot reach, and was about one hundred and twenty-five feet high. We measured another, that had a sixty-six foot reach and they were all bending down with fruit. It was marvelous and they were certainly giving us their evidence that the thing for us to do is to go ahead and reproduce them.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Van Duzee, tell us your impressions of these trees.

COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Chairman, I simply will add this. As I came through this wonderfully fertile section of the country, I observed people building bungalows and cottages and setting out trees other than pecan in their dooryards. That is the pity of it. As Dr. Smith says these people here are living close to some of the most magnificent natural trees I have ever seen, and yet they will go and plant around their gardens trees that will do nothing in the world but produce shade. It seems to me there is room for the best kind of missionary work here. I am glad the nut growers met here and I hope the effect will be to cause people to think. As we came down the road we estimated that on one tree there were four or five hundred pounds of nuts. The owner of that tree didn't study the soil that produced that magnificent crop. Our driver said they had had two years of failure in their farming operations and yet right here in the same place nature has handed them another magnificent crop. I have an idea that the average annual value per acre of crops on the farms of southern Indiana and Illinois will run in the neighborhood of a ten dollar bill, and here is a tree, one tree, presenting thirty dollars. I have no doubt in the world that there will be fifty or sixty dollars' worth of nuts on this tree up here, and it doesn't occupy a quarter of an acre of land.

I want to speak about the insects. I don't believe you need to worry about these unless the planting goes away beyond what I think it will in this section. Here is the proof, right here in this river bottom in the nuts we see on these trees and the growth of the trees. They are thrifty, not mutilated by insects or dying. They are at home and the conditions are absolutely favorable. I have been very much pleased and very glad I came, and if I were not thoroughly tied up in a section I think is more adapted to nut growing, I should come up here and undertake to do something in this section, for I see great possibilities.

THE PRESIDENT: That is an opinion that is of real value. Now I will call for volunteers. Those of you who have been sight seeing here and have impressions and ideas you would like to express we should be glad to hear from.

PROFESSOR CLOSE: One thought that has interested me is this. If we should take away from this neighborhood about half a dozen men this great industry would be forgotten. It is to these men who have done this kind of work that we owe a great deal. They are engaged in a wonderful work. I presume they realize how great it is. It means the developing of an industry that will grow in the United States and could be carried to other countries. These great trees are a wonder, no question about it, and the fact that here is a new industry being pushed by half a dozen men is still more wonderful.

THE PRESIDENT: If this section of the country had been planted to seedling pecans it would have made every man who owned forty acres of it, comfortable. We have with us Mr. Dodd, who is one of the old residents of this neighborhood. He can tell us some interesting things. He was here long before I came and looks at present as if he might be here many years yet. We certainly hope he will be. If it were not for him we would not know that Enterprise is on the map. He reports for the county paper and keeps the world in touch with Enterprise. I should like to hear him tell about the old pecan trees when he first knew them, and I want what he knows about them to go into the record.

MR. DODD: Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen: I'm no speech maker, never made one in my life, but I guess I know something about the pecan business. These trees were here when I came and that was in 1852. Those big trees that you looked at were big trees then, and must have been fifty years old, I judge, from what I have learned from older people. So you see they have been there a long time. I have a piece of ground here and if I had known as much about the pecan business then as I do now I would have had every foot of my land in pecans. I make a right smart little money in pecans as it is. Littlepage knows that. I have shipped pecans to him off my trees, shipped them to him many times. They are no better than the others, but we are old friends and he wanted me to send them to him and I did. I don't know anything about the pecan business in a general way, as to what they will produce or how much money they will average, but I think we have slept on our rights in this country for seventy-five years. If that is any good to you, you are welcome to it, and we are glad you are here today.

MR. POMEROY: One tree out in the back here looks as if it might be fifteen or sixteen years old and it is bearing well. It is a large tree well filled with nuts, notwithstanding the fact that lightning has struck it twice and destroyed at least two years' crops. It seems to me there are thousands of dollars to be made in an investment in nut trees here where they do so well.

THE PRESIDENT: Now has any one else any observations to make? Mr. Weber.

MR. WEBER: Out here you remember you showed us quite a number of seedlings growing in a corn field like milkweeds, growing right alongside of them, and one of us thought the milkweeds were the pecans, as they looked much the same. It seems to be hard to keep them down.

THE PRESIDENT: That reminds me that when this organization was formed I had the honor of being the first man on the ground. Dr. Deming called the meeting to order, Dr. Morris was there and so was Professor Craig, who has since passed to the great beyond, and a number of others, and I remember telling the bunch who were there at that time, that if I ever had the opportunity I would take them into a country where the pecans really grew. I have attempted to make good. If there remains any doubt in your minds we will proceed to lose you in the great Green River pecan woods, and if you are not pretty well stocked with provisions, you may never get out. I told Professor Close who is making a study of the pawpaw for the Department of Agriculture, that we also grew pawpaws in southern Indiana and that I would show him some large trees. So he came down with us and we went to Boonville and got in Senator Hemenway's automobile and I introduced him to a pawpaw tree six feet and a half in circumference at the ground, five foot in circumference three feet from the ground. So the chair takes some pleasure in having been able to show the things that were promised. Let us hear from Mr. Riehl.

MR. RIEHL: I think you folks are very unfair to me. You have said everything I wanted to say before you called on me and I really don't know what else I can say. I had in mind what Professor Smith has been saying to me, and what some of you people have already said, that it is time for you people here to wake up. You don't know what you have got. You are like people in many other sections of the country, they don't appreciate what they have at their very doorways. If I were a young man, I would come here and plant pecan and walnut trees, but I am too old now to make such changes. In a few years you may remember what I have said. The walnuts are as profitable as anything else, and much more so than any farm crop you can grow. Nothing will produce as much value and with as little trouble as nut trees. I am convinced of that.