63 



uf tannic acid for this purpose. Again, besides the timber and 

 the bark, the sweet, edible nuts have always been popular and used 

 extensively as food in the fall of the year. Finally, as an orna- 

 mental tree, the American chestnut has been highly prized : many 

 fine old estates along the Hudson, through New England, and 

 farther south were noted for their massive, ]:)atriarchal chestnut 

 trees. 



Extent of Damage and Amount of Loss Caused by Chestnut 

 Blight. The most recent surveys of the Office of Forest Pathol- 

 ogy, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, show that by the end of 1930 

 all of the chestnut producing counties in the Southern Appala- 

 chians, the stronghold of the American chestnut, will show an 

 infection of sixty per cent, or more. With practically all of the 

 merchantable chestnut now dead in the region north of this area, 

 this means that the American chestnut as a timber producing tree 

 will soon become extinct. It means also, therefore, a tremendous 

 pecuniary loss to the American people, not only from the death 

 of the existing stands of this valuable timber, but from the cess- 

 ation of production of all the future stands. Whereas, in 191 1, 

 $25,000,000.00 was regarded as a conservative estimate of the loss 

 from this dire disease, now, with its advance into practically the 

 entire area where the chestnut is of commercial importance, the 

 loss must be many times greater than this. 



Character of the Work of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in ip2p. 

 For the securing of stock wherewith to make desirable crosses in 

 the future, the work has gone forward in three directions during 

 the past year. First, by the planting and cultivation of seedlings 

 and hybrids which we have received from outside sources; second, 

 by a survey of existing, disease-resistant, oriental trees in the re- 

 gion about New York with a view to determining which are the 

 best for stock to be used in crossing, and third, by the collection 

 of nuts from these trees, to be used in the raising of future stock 

 for hybridization. These lines of work are described below. 



Plantations. A beginning of these had already been made in 

 1928 (Brooklyn Bot. Gard. Record 18: 58, 1928) when nuts of 

 the Japanese species, Castanca japonica, and of the Chinese, C. 

 mollissinia, were germinated here at the Garden. At that time 

 fifteen of the Japanese and five of the Chinese were set out at 



