10? 
with his little Tareeding station at Bell, Maryland. 
He is situated where he is under almost ideal con- 
ditions for good work. He is not bothered with ad- 
ministrative detail and is a sort of free lance 
to go and do as he pleases. He is certainly get- 
ting results with his chestnuts, roses, raspberries, 
and a number of other things. I am sending you 
herewith a memorandum setting forth some of the 
points we noted on a recent visit to the little 
station. Since writing this memorandum we have 
made another visit in company with Mr. Fairchild 
and Mr. Bisset, went over the work carefully, and 
are making plans to distribute some of Dr.Van Fleet's 
best chestnuts through our office. Dr. Van Fleet 
is strongly of the opinion that we should push the 
distribution of Castanea mollissima further. I must 
say that of all the chestnuts we tested at the 
Doctor's, C. mollissima v/as , to our taste, about 
the head of the list. It was fruiting about as 
freely as any of his hybrids and was resisting 
blight very well. The Doctor's little orchard is 
only a short distance from a large grove of old 
chestnut trees that are badly blighted. There 
was a little blight on some C. mollissima , but it _ 
was the blight and not the trees that was having 
the struggle. Insofar as the chestnut fruit is 
concerned it looks as though the Doctor had prac- 
tically solved the problem, even though all of our 
American chestnuts disappear with the blight, as 
is likely to be the case in the next decade. 
The problem of a suitable tree for wood, and 
telephone and telegraph poles, however, is still 
an open one, and as more than twenty-five per cent 
of all our telephone poles are chestnut it is im- 
portant that a substitute be secured. 
Mr Fairchild is writing you in regard to 
Castanea vilmoriniana and the securing of seeds 
of this"" valuable species. Getting seed through 
to us in somewhat of a problem. Of chestnuts 
and chinquapins Dr. Van Fleet , says only about 
fifty per cent germinate. The shipment of C. 
mollissima v/hich you sent in last winter was, I 
understand, all lost. Dr. Van Fleet is interested 
in all chinquapins and particularly in anything 
in the way of dv/arf chinquapins from China. I 
hope you may be able to run across something of 
this nature and again send us some of the seed. 
December 31, 1917- 
