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PUBLISHED BY ALLIED ARTS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
R. J. HAIGHT, President 
H. C. WHITAKER, Vice-President and General Manager 
O. H. SAMPLE, Secretary-Treasurer 
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JULY, 1916 
EDITORIAL 
VOL. XXVI No. 5 
Breeding Chestnut Trees for Disease Control 
How to checkmate the chestnut blight or bark disease that is 
causing such vast destruction is a problem of no small impor- 
tance. From, its obscure beginnings in Eastern New York about 
twelve years ago, it has swept into nineteen states, and now 
affects about all of the northern half of our native chestnut 
stands, doing damage estimated at close upon $SO,OCO,0(X). It 
attacks the trees in twig, branch and trunk, causing death in a 
year or two, and soon recurs in the sprouts or suckers sent up 
from the still living roots. No native chestnut appears to be 
spared in the long run, but the little Eastern bush chinquapin, 
with its smoother bark and comparative freedom from insect 
enemies, appears less readily attacked. The European chestnut 
in its favorite varieties, is also subject to the disease, but when 
we come to the chestnuts of Japan and China we find very great 
lesistance, amounting in some varieties to almost practical immu- 
nity. There appears to be now no method of controlling this dis- 
ease, which is caused by a fungus whose spores are carried about 
by birds and insects, creating new infections wherever they 
reach the sap wood or inner bark of the chestnut tree. There 
is no apparent diminution of its virulence since it came under 
observation. 
The most obvious means of replacing the great losses of 
chestnut timber and nuts would seem to lie in the substitution 
tor our native forms the Asiatic species that best resist the dis- 
ease, having evidently for ages been accustomed to its presence, 
and also to breed the chestnut as a valuable genus of forest 
trees, by hybridization and selection for the avowed produc- 
tion of varieties better adapted for our purposes. 
Some chestnut breeding has already been accomplished in 
various parts of our country, and generally with good results. A 
promising experiment of this character has been under the direc- 
tion of the Office of Forest Pathology of the U. S. Department 
of Agriculture for several years. 
Hybrids between the highly resistant Japan chestnut and our 
native chinquapin have been raised in considerable numbers, 
quickly forming handsome dwarf trees, bearing at an early age 
profuse crops of nuts of excellent quality, five or six times the 
size of those of the wild chinquapin parent, and ripening weeks 
before any other chestnuts. So far, these trees show a very 
high degree of disease resistance. 
Fountains as Ideal Memorials 
The St. Louis Art League opens a large subject in the future 
progress of the city by its announcement of a prize contest for 
St. Louis sculptors to produce the best three designs for a public 
drinking fountain that can be erected at a cost not exceeding 
$2,500. It is a modest figure and a fund of $50,000 ought to be 
raised for completing the work. Modern civic fountains are in a 
monumental sense unsurpassed in allegorical interest and poetical 
beauty. For its natural endowment in running water St. Louis 
can point to the continental rivers at its doors, says one of the 
local newspapers. The ^Mississippi and the Missouri rivers meet 
here. Not far above the city comes in the Illinois river, destined 
te be part of a deep ship waterway. Within convenient reach 
below the city is the mouth of the Ohio. It is needless to speak 
of the Wabash and many other navigable affluents that combine 
before the great tide of fresh water arrives at the Gulf. A foun- 
Menace of White 
The white pine blister rust has reached a stage where, accord- 
ing to specialists of the United States Department of .\gricul- 
ture, energetic action is imperative if the disease is to be con- 
trolled. Not only is all of the eastern white pine threatened 
already, but there is little doubt that if rigid state quarantines do 
not stop it, the infection ultimately will ravage the great forests 
of the west. In Farmers’ Bulletin 742, a new publication of the 
L'nited States Department of .'\griculture on this subject, the 
symptoms of the disease and preventive measures are described 
in detail. The white pine blister rust is cau.sed by a fungus 
somewhat similar to the fungi that arc responsible for wheat 
rust and cedar apple rust. It attacks pines that hear their needles 
in bundles of five each, a classification which includes twelve- 
native varieies and nine imported ones. In addition, both wild 
and cultivated currants and gooseberries are susceptible. These 
bushes are, in fact, essential to the spread of the disease. The 
rust was imported from Europe in shipments of nursery stock 
and is now known to exist in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, but owners 
tain that could express the idea of a river system that extends 
into more than half the states, from Pennsylvania to Montana, 
from Louisiana to Canada, affords theme enough for the most 
active imagination. 
Fountains in Europe are one of its finest art developments. 
Rome has scores where it once had hundreds, and still visitors 
wonder at the number and attractiveness of those remaining. 
Cairo, Egypt, is described as a town half asleep, but it retains 
300 fountains. A business man of Cincinnati gave a $200,000 
fountain, emblematic of the blessings of water. It is the most 
ambitious work of art in the town and a large part of the inhabi- 
tants pass it every day. The idea of a competition in public 
fountains is one worthy of emulation and it is to be hoped that 
St. Louis will succeed in securing something as scupturally beau- 
tiful and as symbolic as Chicago’s “Fountain of the Great Lakes.” 
Pine Blister Rust 
of white pine should be on the lookout for it in every state. The 
characteristic symptoms of the disease are described with illus- 
trations in the bulletin mentioned. The easiest to detect are 
perhaps the irregular swellings in the bark which may appear 
at any time from a few months to six years after infection. This 
long period of incubation makes the disease especially difficult to 
detect and is a serious obstacle to its control. In the spring the 
fruiting bodies of the parasite thrust themselves from within 
through the swollen hark and form whitish bli-^ters as large as a 
child’s finger-nail. After a few days the blisters break and dis- 
close bright yellow dusty spores. These are blown about by the 
wind, but in order to perpetuate themselves must alight on the 
leaves of currants or gooselierries. /\ healthy pine can not itself 
he infected directly by spores from another tree. 
If these or any of the other .symptoms described in Bulletin 742 
are found, some competent official should be notified at once and 
if he recommends the destruction of trees or bushes, his advice 
should be taken without hesitation. 
