r
to this final query is almost, if not quite, as important as would be an
account of the means employed to make it successful--if it succeeded.

I should like to know, for example, whether anything remains of the
Neilson-Post project in Michigan and what its history has been. I should
like to hear more, also, about the outcome of many of Mr. Gerardi's
intensely interesting and original experiments, such as his method,
described in the 29th Annual Report, of asexual propagation of heartnut
trees on their own roots; or his method of artificially creating
beautifully marked burls on black walnut logs by systematically and
repeatedly scoring the bark. These and many others. Which experiments
were successful and which were not? Mr. Gerardi's original and
adventurous mind is the sort that should be probed for the benefit of
those who come after us.

My report today is my own short and tentative contribution to such a
resume.

In the 1938 Report, on page 73, you will find my ambitious and
optimistic "Farm Plan for Nut Tree Planting." In it I tried to outline a
plan which could be used by any practical farmer with but slight
sacrifice of useful land. Its last sentence reads as follows: "Meantime,
I shall have kept practically all my land in profitable use all the
time." Well, that depends upon what is interpreted as "profitable use."
Tree growth is surely profitable.

The plan, in substance, was as follows: First, plant 20 acres in a
modified forest formation to selected seed, mostly black walnut, the
trees to stand 8 feet apart in rows 22 feet apart. Use the space between
the rows first for truck gardening and later for an interplanted row of
some fast-growing species for timber. No grazing permitted. Second,
plant another 20 acres to a nut orchard using grafted trees of named
varieties spaced 80 feet apart. Protect from livestock and permit
grazing. Finally, plant seed in another 30 acres, spaced 80 feet apart,
the seedlings to be eventually topworked to the wood of promising
discoveries from the first plot. Protect and cultivate or graze.

What has been the outcome of this plan to date? The proposed plan worked
very well in a 20-acre plot where a meadow was planted to an orchard of
grafted trees, mostly pecans and Carpathians, which were protected by
cattle guards, but was not completed in the seedling 20-acre plantation
where the trees stood 8 feet apart in rows 22 feet apart. No grazing was
permitted there, but berr