101 



lire that so closely resembles it that it is liai'd to tell it. It is 

 sometimes doubtful. I liave not, however, found any ascospores 

 there this fall. The nursery stock shows nothing at all. The 

 idea is to keep it clean, cut out everything, so we do not wait to 

 see whether it is there or not. 



1)11. J. IIUISSELL (SMITH, of Pennsylvania: Mr. Chairman; 

 before the cutters-out and anti-cutters-out begin taking up the 

 questions of the afternoon, 1 want to speak about one point in 

 connection with the recent lecture. Mr. Davis stated, in pass- 

 ing, that the waste land of this State would feed as many pigs 

 as I In; whole State produces. ^Ve Jiave lots of pigs, yet that 

 assertion as to the ])ossibili(i('S of the waste land is understated. 



Man, in looking at the; bolanieal realm, began at the wrong 

 end. When the human race looked at the hundred thousand 

 species of plants, it picked out little measley grasses, with a 

 grain or two of seed, from which it developed rye, corn and wheat, 

 while here were the giants of nature, bearing hickory nuts, wal- 

 nuts, persimmons, peaches, apples, and pears; yet very few of 

 them have been improved, for the reason that, for the annual 

 cropper, his grains permit of easy improvement and the big 

 trees, with their slow generations, were very difhcult to improve. 

 Yet they are the potential heavy harvest yielders. Wherever we 

 find land put over to tree crops, it yields several fold the annual 

 crop. Chestnut-growing in Europe, as in Italy for example, is 

 an established industry. Ollicial reports show an annual pro- 

 duction of chestnuts in Italy of thirteen bushels to the acre, and 

 I know, by examination of the orchards, that they are not in any 

 way in a high class condition or very carefully attended to in 

 many localities. We average at least that, with the American 

 standard of weight per acre, in the United States. I have not 

 a doubt that if some of those big Japanese chestnuts were bred, 

 selected, and hybridized, we could get varieties of chestnuts 

 which Avould yield fifteen or twenty bushels per acre on the aver- 

 age, of first-class pig feed. Furthermore, it permits the use of 

 land which is now entirely unusable for anything except forest, 

 wliich is a very low grade producer of annual cash value. For 

 example, to-day on the train between here and Philadelphia I 

 saw a block of ground which covers twenty-two thousand acres, 



