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Doctor Morris: Stamford is a natural home of the hazel. 

 Wild hazels fill the fields to such an extent that they destroy pas- 

 tures very often. Hazel blight, therefore, is to be found there as an 

 indigenous organism or parasite. Among the native hazels it 

 apparently attacks only those that have been injured or are weak- 

 ened by age or otherwise. That is the common history where a 

 plant has existed along with a parasite for centuries or ages, a cer- 

 tain amount of tolerance is established by the resistance of a few 

 individual plants and the elimination of the others. By natural 

 selection the best survives. 



Now when I brought some European hazels to this place a lit- 

 tle over twenty years ago they made a good start. In two or three 

 years all were attacked with blight and at the end of four or five 

 years all were dead. I spoke to Mr. Henry Hicks about it. He has 

 a place on Long Island. Mr. Hicks said, " I have given up foreign 

 hazels. They are no use. They all die. I don't try them." When- 

 ever anybody says that to me it starts me right off doing it. When 

 they said we couldn't graft hickories I said, " Well, here is some- 

 thing to do," and I did it. They said, " Well, we couldn't raise 

 hazels; we might as well give up." I said, "Well, here is the best 

 thing for us to do then." So again I got a small lot and observed 

 them day by day. Very soon the blight began to attack them. I 

 found it grew slowly and gave me plenty of time to cut it out. I 

 neglected some purposely to see how long it would take the blight 

 to girdle a limb and some of the larger limbs took two years. In all 

 of the limbs that were affected, in the hazels which I wished to save, 

 I simply cut out the blight with a sharp jackknife, painted the spot 

 with a little paint,' an antiseptic or something of the sort, and had 

 complete control. In fact I found that I needed to go over my 

 hazel bushes not more than once a year to look after the blight, and 

 in one day, or part of a day, with a sharp jackknife I had absolute 

 control of the blight. 



There are some large European hazels that I have neglected and 

 have allowed the blight to get under way. Some of them are so 

 resistant that they bear very good crops notwithstanding the fact 

 that they are neglected and have the blight. Others have died. 

 Therefore it is a relative question, a question of relative immunity to 

 the blight. My belief is that the blight will not be any more injurious 

 to our hazels than the San Jose scale has been to the peaches. We 

 have complete control of the San Jose scale because we know the 

 habits of the scale insect. I believe we have complete control of the 

 hazel blight because we know the habits of that particular sporella. 



As to the question of growing in the shade or in the sunshine,. 

 on the Palmer property not very far from me, there are some very 

 large bushes of red and white avellana and of the purple hazel that 

 have been overshadowed by other trees because they haven't been 

 looked after. Those are all very large bushes, in fact they have 

 grown to be small trees and they are completely overshadowed by 



