our
American sweet and all of the European type, including Paragon, Numbo,
Dager, Ridgely, etc., have been gone for years, and left our Japs just
about as healthy looking as they were 20 years ago, yet they were all
set in the same block."

THE SECRETARY: It is encouraging to know that Mr. Killen has a strain of
chestnuts that will grow there without being destroyed by blight.

MR. REED: Blight is not serious with his trees.

THE SECRETARY: It is with mine. But Mollissima has resistance.

MR. REED: The real pest in Mr. Killen's chestnut planting is the weevil.
The nuts have to be marketed promptly in order to avoid destruction by
this insect.

THE SECRETARY: I have a letter from Mr. Littlepage, who regrets that he
will not be able to be with us.

Another letter is from Mr. Riehl, who regrets that because of his age he
will not be able to take the long trip from Godfrey, Ill., to New York
City. He writes to us of the place of the chestnut in northern nut
culture, as follows:

"Blight and weevil are the greatest enemies of this nut. Blight in all
probability will destroy practically all native chestnut where it is
native, and in all such districts the planting of chestnut orchards for
profit will be useless until varieties are found or produced that are
immune to that disease. In time this, no doubt, will be done. If I were
fifty years younger and lived in a blight section, it would appeal to me
to do something in that line.

Where the chestnut does not grow naturally it can be grown without fear
of the disease. I have the largest chestnut orchard in the West, of all
ages from seedlings to sixty years, with no blight.

Even were there no blight it would not be advisable to plant chestnut
orchards where it is native because of the weevil. The weevil appears to
be worse on the large improved varieties than on the smaller native. Of
course any one planting a chestnut orchard now would plant the newer,
larger varieties, as they will always outsell the smaller. No one who
has not talked with handlers of chestnuts can have any idea of the
handicap the weevil is to sales and prices. Where the chestnut is not
native the nuts produced will be free of weevils.

The place to plant chestnut orchards is where the chestnut is not
native, on soils that are not wet. Such situations exist in the central
west and westward to the Pacific coast. I have had reports of chestnut
trees growing and bearing in all this territory, and