167 



propriutiiiji any public money for methods of eradicatiou of this 

 particular disease. 1 thiuk the disease is scattered too generally 

 throughout the State. We have no need of a quarantine line 

 on the east, because we have the Delaware Kiver and the ocean, 

 nor on the west because our friends over in Maryland already 

 have the disease. The Chesapeake Bay does not seem to have 

 stopped it on the west. I think our solution of the problem, 

 if we have any, lies in the question of management, and 1 am 

 rather loath to believe that even the chestnut is entirely doomed 

 in the State of Delaware, even where the infection is as general 

 as it is, as I believe, — I am optimistic in the matter, — that with 

 proper management, brought about with proper educational pro- 

 paganda, we will be growing chestnuts in some manner, a great 

 many years hence. ^Ve have many chestnut plantations in our 

 State. We are not advising our growers to plant chestnuts for 

 nut culture, neither are we advising the planting of chestnut 

 trees in our forests. I3ut w'e believe that, by cutting out dis- 

 eased trees, esj^tecially the larger trees, as soon as their useful- 

 ness passes, and putting them upon the market, — that is, when 

 the annual increment falls down below the amount of damage 

 done annually by the disease, — that in this way, the disease may 

 be gradually eliminated, to such an extent, that in certain locali- 

 ties, finally all the diseased chestnut trees will have been taken 

 out, I believe, that there w ill still be left a number of chestnut 

 trees that have never taken the disease. By proper management 

 and by encouraging people to take out trees as they become dis- 

 eased, I believe that in years hence, we will still find a great 

 many chestnut trees growing in our Delaware forests. 



There is another point regarding infection, which I have 

 not heard spoken of here, that has come under my observation. 

 I have noticed that where hunters are allowed in young coppice 

 growth that a great many of the young sprouts are injured by 

 the shot, and that in areas infected by the chestnut disease that 

 every shot hole offers a point of entrance for the disease. Hunters 

 should not be allowed in young chestnut coppice. 



Having, as we do in Delaware, a number of chestnut orchards, 

 it throws a rather interesting light upon the question of drought 

 as a predisposing cause of the chestnut disease. Those orchards 

 are under cultivation the same as our apple orchards. They 



