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CHESTNUT BARK DISEASE. 403 
seedling chestnuts which had been transplanted when one year 
old, and found 46 per cent. infected. with the blight, which had 
been present there at least two years, and probably started at 
the time of transplanting. The roots of these plants, when 
examined, were in good condition. We had the superintendent 
cut off, all the diseased trees in one row. (sixty-nine), and in 
February, 1913, the sprouts that had come from these showed 
only one that was plainly infected with blight, although they 
were exposed to the-blight from infected seedlings that had not 
been removed. The first-year sprouts from old stumps also 
rarely show infection. According to our infection experiments, 
it usually takes only a month for the canker to show after 
inoculation, so these one-year-old sprouts had time to show the 
disease if they were infected. We believe the old, well-estab- 
lished roots produced unusually vigorous sprouts, which for 
the time being, at least, escaped infection. 
Vitality versus Chemical Activity. We believe that favorable 
or unfavorable climatic conditions for a plant are recorded 
through chemical activities concerned with its growth and 
vigor, and that a lessening of this chemical activity might with 
some plants be shown by lessened resistance to fungous attack. 
The following few references show the relationship of environ- 
ment on chemical activities of certain plants. 
Hasselbring (Bot. Gaz. 53, p. 120) says: “It is true, of 
course, that plants are modified in their fluctuating characteristics 
by changes in the environment, but so far as experimental 
evidence shows, such modifications persist only as long as the 
environment inducing them persists. LeClerc and Leavitt, in 
their work with wheat, showed that this influence of the environ- 
ment is exerted also on the chemical composition of plants. 
When wheat of one variety from one locality was grown in other 
localities with a -widely different environment, the chemical 
composition of the grain was different in each locality. These 
differences persisted as long as the wheat was grown in the 
particular locality, but if at any time seed from one locality 
was grown in any of the others, the grain took on the composi- 
tion of the wheat constantly grown in those localities.. 
Vasey (U. S. Dept. Agr. Rept. 1872, p. 171) mentions a case 
where the alkaloids of cinchona bark were decreased by unfavor- 
able climatic conditions in the case of plants grown in England 
