62 



Dr. Smith: I think I can say all I know about the chestnut in 

 a very few minutes. Mr. Chairman, I feel very greatly flattered by 

 the statement that I know something about the chestnut. I have seen 

 in Japan a few chestnut orchards in which they are propagating just 

 as we did here 20 years ago. It is an industry of comjjaratively small 

 extent, but growing in Japan. The most interesting thing I found out 

 about the chestnut was the taste of uuts from the European trees, 

 where they bad been doing a good deal of selection with a strain of the 

 European chestnut. I tasted them in Peking and they are almost 

 identical with our variety of Paragon, which was propagated in this 

 section before the blight came. 



Apparently we are on the eve of being able to import grafted 

 trees. I would like to call attention to the fact tint thus far the gov- 

 ernment has been importing seedlings almost exclusively, but in Dr. 

 Galloway's paper he mentions imjDorting grafted trees and scions. 

 There is no reason why this cannot be done. I imported from Japan 

 some scions of persimmons and they are growing. We ought to be 

 able within a short time to import scions into this country. The re- 

 port about the hybrid tree bearing nuts is important. There is really 

 great progress implied in that paper. 



Dr. ^Iorris: The mollissima chestnut will blight. It is compara- 

 tively resistant but not wholly. Hybrids we get from the chinquapin 

 are likely to be more resistant. I have a cross between the mollissima 

 and our native chinquapin not yet bearing which is extremely thrifty. 

 It is 12 years old. It promises to be a timber tree and also a tree 

 that will bear nuts. I have a number of others of that same breed 

 and this one has outdistanced all the others in which I made the same 

 cross. I think the henryi is likely to be best for wood. Our common 

 chinquapin west of the Mississippi River grows to a height of 50 feet. 



