410 CONNECTICUT EXPERIMENT STATION REPORT, IQI2. 



Carroll County, the same state, is the statement: "The forests 

 contained a large quantity of chestnut, which began to die about 

 ten years ago, and now scarcely a tree is left. Even the bushes 

 are nearly all dead, though no insect or worm or other cause 

 affecting them has been discovered." From Hall County also 

 it is said: "Until within a few years chestnut abounded, but 

 now nearly every tree is dead or dying." And from Walton 

 County : "The chestnut has all died." 



1847-77. Under Diseases oT Chestnut, p. 116, A. S. Fuller, 

 in The Nut Culturist, published in 1896, writes: "I have never 

 noticed any special disease among chestnuts, neither do I find 

 any mentioned in European books on forestry. The nearest 

 approach to any such malady being recorded as having appeared 

 in this country, is found in a paragraph in Hough's Report on 

 Forestry, 1877, page 470, where the author copies from Pro- 

 fessor W. C. Kerr, state geologist of North Carolina, as 

 follows : 'The chestnut was formerly abundant in the Piedmont 

 region down to the country between the Catawba and Yadkin 

 rivers, but within the last thirty years they have mostly perished. 

 They are now found east of the Blue Ridge only, on higher 

 ridges and spurs of the mountains. They have suffered injury 

 here, and are dying out both here and beyond the Blue Ridge. 

 They are much less fruitful than they were a generation ago, 

 and the crop is much more uncertain.' While there is nothing 

 said about chestnut disease in the paragraph quoted, we only 

 infer that the author intended to convey the idea that the trees 

 were suffering from some endemic malady, although it may 

 have been due to long droughts, insect depredators, or other 

 causes. A few years later Mr. Hough, in his Elements of 

 Forestry, refers to the subject again, and admits that 'the cause 

 of the malady is unknown.' But as the chestnuts continue to 

 come to our market in vast quantities from the Piedmont 

 regions, there must be' a goodly number of healthy trees 

 remaining." 



1889. On this date, P. H. Mell, in the Ala. Exp. Stat. Bull. 

 3, p. 16, says: "The trees [chestnut] of this state seem to be 

 subject to a blight, or some destructive disease that is rapidly 

 destroying them. This is particularly true when other trees 

 are cut around them. This subject is worthy of careful investi- 

 gation, and will be a problem for the experiment station to 



