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that their tops were badly infected; every one in fact. This 

 shows that when you find a focal center, it would be advisable 

 to keep on cutting all around the focal center until you have 

 taken every infected tree, and not to depend on surface indica- 

 tions. 



You may look at the stump witli a microscope and you may 

 not find any spores; for I will tell you that I have hunted for 

 surface indications of the blight for the past few years in my 

 tract, and never found indications of the bark splitting or spore 

 (hist at the roots or base of the stump, until last year, yet the 

 lops of the trees, in certain sections, are all dead; they started 

 dying several years ago. 



I want to say one thing more. The farmers can help the 

 Pennsylvania Chestnut IJlight Commission by starting to do 

 some of the work of inspection themselves, and if in doubt, may 

 call on the Commission for advice and information. The Com- 

 mission is willing to send men out to help you to locate the 

 bliglit and tell you what to do. I will also try to help you, or, 

 if you will send your foresters to my tract near Mt. Gretna, I 

 will try to help them. 



I have discovered a new way of finding the blight which T 

 wish to present to this body for what it is worth. I want to tell 

 you how you can see the blight even ninety feet in the air on 

 what we call top-infected trees. You place your back directly 

 towards the sun, half close your eyes and then look up along 

 tlie top part of the tree, and if there is any blight in the cracks 

 of the bark in a direct line with the rays of the sun, you mil 

 find the yellow spores highly illuminated. Under any other 

 condition you would not see these spores, as they would be 

 liidden by tlie shadows cast by the bark. Now, say in two hours, 

 after the sun lias illiiininated another portion of the tree, you 

 had better go through that tract again. In other words, start 

 (*ut going through the tract by one route so planned that during 

 different times of the day you will have passed the same tree 

 several times, and each time place the sun directly back of you, 

 and you will be surprised with the results. I think Mr. Fox, (if 

 he is here), will verify what I have said. Both of us spent 

 three days in inspecting an area of trees, and did not find an 

 infected tree. But, one morning, on that coldest day we had for 



