Che Mona! IRurservman. 
FOR GROWERS AND DEALERS IN NURSERY STOCK 
The National Nurseryman Publishing Co., Incorporated 
Vol. XXIX. HATBORO, PENNA ., AUGUST 1921 RT1 
Nursery Stock Investigation of the Department of Agriculture 
American Association of Nurserymen, Chicago, III., June 22, 1021. 
Mr. President and members of the American Associa¬ 
tion of Nurserymen, I am indeed glad of this opportunity 
of meeting with you at your annual convention. While I 
have had the pleasure of meeting many of you at your 
nurseries, I am glad of this opportunity of renewing old 
acquaintances and also meeting new ones. May I say 
to those of you whose places I have not yet visited, I 
trust that some time during the course of our investiga¬ 
tions I may have that pleasure. 
The subject which has been assigned to me by your 
Secretary, The Raising of Fruit Tree Seedlings in Amer¬ 
ica is, I believe, more or less of a tentative one, as he 
stated in his letter he assumed I would want to place 
special emphasis on the Nursery Stock Investigations we 
have undertaken this year in the Federal Department of 
Agriculture. With your permission I would like to de¬ 
velop my remarks along this line and also with the apol¬ 
ogy that as our work is so new, I will simply be able to 
outline very brifly a few of the things we have started. 
A great deal has been said in your Nursery Conven¬ 
tions regarding Federal Horticulture hoard Quarantine 
Order No. 37. Regardless of your own individual opin¬ 
ions regarding this order, it was nevertheless, as a direct 
outgrowth of this order, arid partially through the efforts 
of members of this Association, that a special item of 
$20,000 for Nursery Stock Investigations was secured for 
the Federal Department of Agriculture, for the present 
fiscal year. The same amount is carried in the regular 
appropriation bill for the Department for the fiscal year 
beginning July 1, 1921. 
Now a word regarding the administrative handling of 
this work: 
The Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction of 
the U. S. Department of Agriculture is interested in the 
general subject of introducing rare varieties of plants 
which may be suited to growth in the United States. So 
a small portion of this money goes to that Office to be 
spent entirely in strictly plant introduction features of 
the stock work. Dr. Galloway, I believe, who met with 
you last year, told you something of the nature of the 
work they were carrying on in cooperation with Prof. 
F. R. Reimer of the Southern Oregon Experiment Station 
at Talent, Oregon, in introducing different species and 
varieties of oriental pears which give promise as stocks. 
The bulk of tbe appropriation this year, $15,000.00 to 
be exact, goes to the Office of Horticultural and Pomolog- 
ical Investigations. This Office is primarily interested 
in the whole question of improving the character ol 
stocks now being used, either by (1) methods of hand¬ 
ling, (2) by a better selection of seedling types, or (3) 
by developing practical methods of vegetatively propa¬ 
gating root stocks. 
I was brought back into the Department on February 
1, of this year, after a year’s absence in commercial 
work, and placed in charge of the Nursery Stock Inves¬ 
tigations project. Associated with me in this work is 
Mr. G. E. Yerkes, a graduate of the Kansas Agricultural 
College, who formerly worked with one of the large nur¬ 
series in Kansas; afterwards was in business for him¬ 
self. He is a good propagator and knows how to raise 
trees. All of the experimental work we are carrying on 
this year is located at our little nursery consisting of 
only a few acres at Bell, Maryland. 
Prior to rny return to the Department, the project was 
directed personally by Prof. L. C. Corbett, the head of 
the Office of Horticultural and Pomological Investiga¬ 
tions. 
Last summer, Prof. Corbett visited England, Holland 
and France and secured some first-hand information re¬ 
garding nursery practices in those countries. 
It seemed advisable that before we started on any ex¬ 
tended work in the Department it would be well for me 
to visit many of the important nursery centers of the 
country. I therefore spent part of February in Pennsyl¬ 
vania, New Jersey and New York, and on March fi left 
on an extended field trip which has taken me through 
the Carolinas, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee. Texas, Ari¬ 
zona, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Kan¬ 
sas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. I hope 
later to visit northern New York and the New England 
States. The purpose of this trip may be said to have 
been fourfold. 
(1) To secure information regarding the suitability 
and adaptability of different sections of the country to 
the raising of nursery stocks. 
(2) To find out what amount, if any, of experimental 
propagation the nurserymen, themselves, are doing; 
(3) To find out the attitude of the nurserymen regard¬ 
ing the Nursery Stock Investigations of the U. S. Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture, and more important than all of the 
preceding; 
(4) To attempt to determine what are a few of the 
most important or outstanding stock problems in tin* dif¬ 
ferent sections so that this information could be used as 
a basis for planning our future work. 
Taking these points up in order, there is no doubt in 
my mind but that our fruit tree stocks can be raised in 
this country. This was demonstrated quite well in the 
case of apple stocks last year, when in addition to seed¬ 
lings from Kansas, seedlings were also raised in Wash- 
