384 CONNECTICUT EXPERIMENT STATION REPORT, IQI2. 



to have noticed an apparent halt in the progress of the disease 

 the past year, which, if continued for another year, will give 

 hope that the chestnuts may escape the severe injury caused in 

 Fairfield County. We estimate the infected chestnuts to be 

 from 40 to 50 per cent, in this county. Of the reports 

 received, seven indicate an increase of the trouble over 1911, 

 while six say the disease was about the same, or less con- 

 spicuous. 



J. H. Putnam, of Litchfreld, writes: "I do not think that 

 the chestnut blight has spread any worse the past season. Its 

 ravages are more noticeable, as many trees previously attacked 

 but not noticed, are now dead. The pieces where I cleaned 

 it out two years ago do not show much spread since." In a 

 later letter he adds this interesting statement: "We have no 

 large trees killed, but have just cut a large tree seriously injured. 

 The cankers on this showed that the disease had gained two to 

 three inches in 1911, but only one-half to one inch in 1912, and 

 in some places the new bark had held its own. Looking over 

 a block of sprouts some ten years old, I found that where two 

 years ago I had considered them doomed, they were making a 

 splendid fight, and in some cases had apparently entirely over- 

 come the disease." 



Donald J. Warner, of Salisbury, takes a similar favorable 

 view, as follows: "I do not think that there were as many 

 trees attacked by the blight in 1912 as in 1911 in this vicinity. 

 On our own property in 1911 we cut several infected patches, 

 and around these patches there were quite a number of trees 

 which died in 1912. Of course it is quite possible that these 

 trees had the disease in 1911 and were missed by the choppers. 

 I did not notice nearly as many new cases as in the previous 

 year." 



C. L. Gold, of West Cornwall, expresses the same view: "I 

 have been cutting quite a lot of chestnut timber this last fall 

 and winter, and find considerable evidence of the disease, which 

 did not show much or at all before the tree was cut. However, 

 the general appearance of our forests as we look at them from 

 a distance showed but little signs of it the past season, nothing 

 near as much as in the summer of 1911. It would seem as 

 if the trees already infected would surely die, but from the 

 results of the past season I am not so sure of it." 



