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we have. I was out with a man owning seven thousand acres in 

 the western part of the State last Friday. The disease was the 

 worst where thinnings had been made and a feAv trees allowed to 

 stand because they were not large enough to cut into ties. 

 These forests were unbalanced and the air and sun allowed to 

 get in. The blight was on the southern side ; the cankers showed 

 up largely there. But in the stands where we had normal con- 

 ditions, we found only a diseased tree once in awhile. There is 

 an unbalancing condition again where forest fires have raged 

 through the State year after year and the trees are abnormal 

 and only half alive anyway. There you find the disease seems 

 to travel more rapidly than it does where the trees are under 

 normal conditions and have a forest floor where there is plenty 

 of moisture and the conditions are more favorable. I have gone 

 over it with some of our best practical men, lumber men, and 

 they seem to think that it is a problem that is going to solve 

 itself. They are good, practical men; they have been in the 

 .business a great many years, and are reluctant to believe that we 

 will lose all our chestnuts. The way that we are endeavoring 

 to solve this problem in Massachusetts is this : I have a forest 

 warden in each town, who is appointed by the officials of the 

 town, subject to the approval of the State Forester. I am en- 

 deavoring to educate these men so that they will know this 

 disease. We have notified all of our papers throughout the State 

 that it is up to the people that own chestnut trees that they 

 become familiar with the disease; otherwise they are likely to 

 lose their chestnut stand. We are sending out literature. We 

 have just sent out a recent bulletin. The idea of the bulletin 

 was to show photographs so that a man could take the bulletin 

 and go out and determine whether the disease is present or not. 

 We send men from the office, at the expense of the State, to 

 assist anybody in cutting out, at the same time giving them 

 ideas as to better forestry management; and with that the idea 

 of education, endeavoring to make the work self-sustaining, so 

 that the people will attend to it themselves and without neces- 

 sitating State expense. I believe the first law is preservation, 

 self-preservation, and I believe we ought to educate, ought to 

 put out more practical publications that people will read. If 

 boiled right down to the essence of the work, farmers will look 



