ood in many localities, but
during the war a serious food shortage forced the people in many other
areas to rely solely upon chestnut flour for weeks at a time."

Professor Aldo Pavari, Director of the _Stazione Sperimentale di
Selvicoltura_ at Florence, visited this country in the summer and fall
of 1946, under the sponsorship of the UNRRA, and spent four days with me
at our plantations, learning our methods and getting acquainted with the
blight resistant hybrids we have been developing by the breeding
together of oriental and native chestnuts. Prof. Pavari visited also the
plantation of the Division of Forest Pathology at Beltsville and
elsewhere, and other plantations in the west. In December we shipped to
Florence, Italy, nuts of our best hybrids, and in March, scions for
grafting--also this summer (1947) pollen of some of our best trees. On
October 15 of this year (1947) we sent another shipment of nuts. Thus we
may be able to give Italy the advantage of the progress we have made to
date.

Regarding the susceptibility to the blight of the European or Spanish
Chestnut (_C. sativa_) we have had the following experience. Our winter
temperatures appear to be too severe for this species. Dying back is
sure to occur, at least at our Hamden, Connecticut plantations, marked
more or less according to the degree of cold; and on the dead parts
_Endothia_ then appears, to later invade the parts still living. In 1932
I received nuts of _C. sativa_ from France from Professor Hochreutiner
of the Geneva Botanic Garden, from Professor Uldrich of the Berlin
Botanic Garden, and also from France from Dr. Guillaumin of the Jardin
de Plantes at Paris. Although I have given the resulting plants much
attention they continually die back each year so that we have only two
or three individuals that are more than six feet high. But Professor
Pavari says in recent correspondence (July 15, 1947) "Referring to
Spanish chestnuts, after we have been assured that the fungus we have
found and observed on _Castanea crenata_ in Spain is really _Endothia
parasitica_, we must admit that our hypothesis may be exact that
_Castanea vesca_ [_sativa_] presents in Spain races or types resistant
to the disease." He goes on to say that the fact that the chestnut
blight is so widespread at Naples and Avellino is at variance with my
theory that cold winters are the predisposing cause, for in the regions
mentioned the winters are mild and "very warm in compariso