ve to be quite a bit of work done on
that. If some of you here know how to do it, I would like to know,
myself. There are a lot of nurserymen who would like to know, according
to the reports I have, how to graft or bud a nursery chestnut tree.

As long as the situation is that way I would say to recommend seedling
trees because of their low price, but--and every grower who has trees
can fall in line with this--the seeds should be from properly culled-out
orchards of the highest type, leaving nothing in there producing nuts or
pollen but what is the highest type. I think all of you who have more
than one type of chestnut in your plantings should cull them all down to
the pure _Castanea mollissima_. I don't mean by cutting out the whole
tree, but go ahead and top-work them. If they won't take the top, _then_
cut them out. But if you can top-work them and the grafting is good, you
can increase your planting of good trees in that manner.

The improved quality of the seed will improve the quality of seedlings
going to the buyer, and the chances of a higher percentage of good
seedlings showing up will be greater. I think it will improve the
industry through a period of years.

Dr. MacDaniels: I think I agree with his position. In fact, that's
exactly what we are telling the inquiries that come in: At the present
state of our knowledge, better try seedling trees.

But I didn't hear anybody get up and say they had an orchard of
20-year-old grafted chestnut trees. I have tried to get them, I have
grafted successfully, I suppose, 7 or 8 different varieties on many
different Chinese stocks that I have bought, or had given to me, and
numbers of grafted trees. I have nothing left. They grow fine, 7 or 8
feet the first year, 3 or 4 feet the next year, then they go along for a
while and then they die. In other words, there is an unsolved problem
there, so that it seems to me at the present state of our knowledge we
had better admit it and say, "If you are an amateur, you better get the
best seedling trees that you can and wait awhile."

Mr. J. C. Moore: I just want to give some data on some of the class work
at Auburn with Chinese chestnuts. We were studying Chinese seedlings,
and we attempted to bud those Chinese chestnut seedlings, and on some of
the larger seedlings we top-worked. We had some 3-year-old seedlings,
and we top-worked the limbs. We put in patch buds, and we put in T-buds
or shield buds, and in practically every ca