t week I went up to East avenue here to see the Thompson walnut grove
and met Mr. Thompson and talked with him. The grove is in a very much
run down condition. In fact he is thinking of using dynamite to blow it
up and market the wood in Batavia for gunstocks at the gun factory
there. He told us that in the thirty-six years that he has had it, he
has had only three crops of nuts. One of the crops was an especially
good one, I have forgotten the number of bushels he had, but he sold one
hundred bushels, he said, to Sibley. Lindsay & Curr at nine dollars a
bushel. If he could get a crop every year at that price I think he would
be making pretty good money. I would class that orchard as a failure.

Last week, however, I had the privilege of seeing a walnut orchard that
certainly surprised me greatly. I went to Lockport at the invitation of
our very enthusiastic member, Mr. Pomeroy, to see the Pomeroy orchard,
and I saw several trees heavily loaded with good sized nuts. Mr. Pomeroy
estimates that he will have in the neighborhood of six or seven thousand
pounds of nuts. The trees look healthy and show no evidence of disease.
As I understand some of the trees are fifty years of age and there have
been only two crop failures in that time. My idea is that the Pomeroy
walnut is very hardy and of unusually fine strain. I believe that there
is little hope for the commercial development of the English walnut much
north of the fortieth parallel. I believe there will be some instances
found, like that of the Pomeroy nut, where the seedling will do very
well. It certainly has done very well with him. The Avon orchards are
seedling trees, of course, the nuts having been gotten from a residence
on Lake avenue, Mrs. Cramer's, at the corner of Emerson street.
Evidently that strain is entirely different from the strain of nuts
represented by the Pomeroy orchard which were brought from Philadelphia
by Mr. Pomeroy's father.

I am going to ask Dr. Morris if he will present his paper and make his
demonstration at this time.

DR. ROBERT T. MORRIS: I have had a good many experiences in grafting for
a number of years. I have finally discarded most methods and have gotten
down to rather simple principles. As a matter of fact this is the last
word from my own point of view. During the past thirty or forty years I
have changed my mind so many times on so many subjects that I have no
confidence at all in anybody who puts any trust in me.

I am g