nuts, I don't see how we are going to do it.
Fertilization is another approach.

Certainly we should make conditions just as favorable as possible for
growth and for the development of the buds and by all means control
insects and diseases. If you do not have a good leaf surface good crops
will not be set the next year. It's a complex problem, but I don't think
it is insoluble.

DR. MCKAY: Mr. Chairman, in connection with this matter of annual
bearing of black walnut trees we believe that in doing all sorts of
things you will not influence the yielding of most of our black walnut
varieties. The black walnut, _Juglans nigra_ is probably--some of us
think, at least--constituted genetically in such a way that the
varieties we have do not yield annual crops simply because they are not
constituted that way. I know some of you may disagree with me, but one
of the greatest arguments for this idea is the fact that in some of our
other nut species we do have varieties that are genetically heavy
producers. For instance, we have a selection of Chinese chestnuts right
now that will bear annual crops on the poorest soil under any conditions
imaginable. You can graft scions of that tree on other stocks and plant
them anywhere you choose under differing conditions and it will have a
heavy set of burs. It may not fill the nuts, it may not attain the size,
but genetically speaking, inherently it is a heavy bearer. Perhaps our
black walnut species are inherently not annual producers. This is hard
to prove, I admit, because the breeding of the species takes so long
that we cannot actually demonstrate it.

We have felt also that the black walnut species as a whole does not have
the characteristics of thin shells and good cracking qualities that we
want. For this reason we have begun a program of crossing the black
walnut with the English or Persian walnut, in order to get the thin
shell that we want from the other species. Perhaps the same thing is
true in the question of yield and the species as a whole does not have
the characteristic of yielding heavy annual crops.

MR. MAGILL: I think we can readily see that we haven't settled this
problem but it is time to close the discussion.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: The next paper that we have is by H. F. Stoke of
Roanoke, Virginia, "Survey on Hickory Varieties." Mr. Stoke is the
chairman of our Survey Committee. Last year he brought us very valuable
information about walnuts, and this year he i