p the public when you can't find out
about it any sooner than that.

Mr. O'Rourke: I quite agree with Mr. Davidson that the nurserymen should
state that a seedling is a seedling when it is a seedling. And I am sure
Mr. Hirschi will corroborate that the American Association of Nurserymen
is exerting all the influence they can to that end. Is that right, Mr.
Hirschi?

Mr. Hirschi: Yes.

Mr. Bregger: I would like to ask, if planters for some years yet will
have to rely on seedlings, is there a chance that from certain parents
or certain varieties we can get a larger percentage of good seedlings
than from others? How much has it been studied and is there a known
result from the parent trees in the percent of what their seedlings can
do?

Dr. Crane: I wish I could answer that one. It is a matter of time, to
find out the seedling characteristics reproduced by a certain
descendant. But we know that there is a difference in _uniformity_ of
trees in the way they grow, but as far as bearing is concerned, and the
type of nut produced, we haven't had enough time yet.

It's just like this: We have made selections for rootstocks in which we
have selected trees that were good, strong and vigorous--the most
vigorously growing trees that we have known about, and yet at the same
time produced a small nut or medium-sized nut that we could use for the
production of rootstocks. And we have made progress on that, and we have
demonstrated that there is a very marked difference between the
graftability or budability of seedlings from certain parent trees. We
have demonstrated that some varieties are much easier to propagate than
are others. But as for the proper combinations of stock and scion, we
still haven't got enough data to recommend any. We know that there are
differences, but it is going to take quite a long while, at least four
or five years or more, before we know.

Now, there is just one other thing that comes up on propagation. We have
found that if you bench-graft and make the graft into the transition
zone between root and top just like the old method that the apple
propagator used when he piece-root grafted and then plant deep, you can
get a hundred per cent of the grafts to grow. In such cases the scion
may root and the top will be on its own roots.

Well, there are a lot of these tricks to learn as time goes on. I don't
think that we should worry too much about this graft union problem. We
know that this Carr variety