410 CONNECTICUT EXPERIMENT STATION REPORT, Ig{2. 
-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 of 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 conveysthe 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 
