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New York City. He writes to us of the place of the chestnut in north- 

 ern nut culture, as follows: 



'"Blight and weevil are the greatest enemies of this nut. Blight 

 in all probability will destroy practic;illy all native chestnut where it is 

 native, and in all such districts the planting of chestnut orchards for 

 profit will be useless until varieties are found or produced that are 

 immune to that disease. In time this, no doubt, will be done. If I 

 -were fifty years younger and lived in a blight section, it would appeal 

 to me to do something in that line. 



Where the chestnut does not grow naturally it can be grown with- 

 out fear of the disease. I have the largest chestnut orchard in the 

 West, of all ages from seedlings to sixty years, with no blight. 



Even were there no blight it would not be advisable to plant chest- 

 nut orchards where it is native because of the weevil. The weevil ap- 

 pears to be worse on the large improved varieties than on the smaller 

 native." Of course any one planting a chestnut orchard now would 

 plant tlie newer, larger varieties, as they will always outsell the 

 smaller. No one who has not talked with handlers of chestnuts can 

 haA-e any idea of the handicap the weevil is to sales and prices. Where 

 the chestnut is not native the nuts produced will be free of weevils. 



The jjlace to plant chestnut orchards is where the chestnut is not 

 native, on soils that are not wet. Such situations exist in the central 

 west and westward to the Pacific coast. T have had reports of chestnut 

 trees growing and bearing in all this territo'ry. and have had favorable 

 reports of trees that I sent there of my inijiroved varieties. 



There is a good market at good prices fo» good, homegrown chest- 

 nuts. Miy own crops so far hive sold readily at 2.5 to lO cents per 

 pound wholesale, and the demand is always for more after the crop 

 is all sold. 



Of all tl.e luits that I have experimented with I have found the 

 cliestnut to come into profitable bearing sooner and more profitably 

 than any other." 



Dr. ^Iorris: Some of the state vice-presidents have spoken of 

 niti\e chestnuts of o;ood kinds. One obstacle, however, in the distribu- 

 tion of good chestnuts, has been the state laws which prevent us from 

 sending chestnuts from one state to the other. I would like to ask 

 Mr. Reed if it would be possible to make some arrangement at Wash- 

 ington wliereljy scions might be sent under government inspection 

 to tile ^^'est and to otlier parts of the country where blight does not 

 exist. On my property at Stamford I liad several thousand choice 

 chestnut trees. The bliglit appeared and I cut out. o. 000 trees that 

 were from fifty years to more than a hundred years old. Among them 

 there was one sweet American chestnut superior to the others. It had 

 a Aery large, high-quality nut. and very beautiful appearance, having 



