59 



in evidence except as rough-barked areas. To make a long story short 

 this sprout is still alive and lias increased in size and height each year. 

 Although now (1924) it is considerably branched and makes a small 

 bushy tree it is badly diseased in numerous places and is only partially 

 alive, but the dead portions have not resulted from some half dozen of 

 the original disease lesions (apparently girdles), but from later 

 infections. The very fact that a sprout should have lived for more 

 than twelve years in the center of one of the most badly diseased areas 

 known to the writer seems at least to suggest the possibility that future 

 chestnut sprouts may j^et grow in spite of the disease and persist — at 

 least in a shrubber}- form if not as a tree. 



Tlie s))rout to which I have just called attention is not an isolated 

 case, but uierely one of the most pronounced that I know about. In a 

 careful survey in July (1921) of the region immediately surrounding 

 the sprout just mentioned two or three other notable, but less pro- 

 nounced, cases of a similar sort were discovered. In two cases fine 

 looking branched sprouts some twenty feet high with healthy-looking 

 foliage were noted. Both were diseased but the disease seemed not 

 to be very conspicuous or virulent. In a recent survey of woodland in 

 Rhode Island (July, 1924) much healthy foliage was observed and 

 several large sprouts were found on which the disease (although 

 present) seemed to be doing little damage when compared with its 

 former virulence in the same general region. 



I call attention to these cases primarily to acquaint you with the 

 results of our latest observations on what seems to me to be cases of 

 gradually developing resistance in some of the remaining sprouts. In 

 all my intensive work on the blight between 1907 and 1913 I cannot 

 now recall a single instance where a chestnut sprout in a disease-ridden 

 area ever reached a diameter of an inch or thereabouts before its ex- 

 istence was cut short by the blight; and yet today — a dozen years later 

 — we are finding quite a number of living sprouts over two inches in 

 diameter, and a few that are three, four, and even up to seven inches 

 in diameter. Last Friday, August 29, I heard of a small chestnut tree 

 in New .lersey that bore a few burs last year and which has a dozen or 

 more this year. If the nuts mature we hope to get some of them to 

 propagate. Last Sunday, August 31, I saw a three inch sprout in Con- 

 necticut that had had a few burs on it. I would be glad to learn of any 

 lases of this sort that may come to your attention. 



You are all thinking men and women and all of you have had exper- 



