I am very critical of the tactics of some of the nurseries. They have
grafted on seedlings of absolutely unknown origin or mixed origin. They
will take a South Chinese variety and graft it on seedlings that for
hundreds of years have been grown in North China. That's just inviting
trouble. The nearer you can get to having seedling and scion from the
same climatic origin, the better off you are. In fact, we have advised
growers to get seedlings of the Nanking and graft Nanking on them.

Dr. McKay is doing a lot of good, basic research work on this problem,
and he will have more information for us in times to come. I am firmly
convinced that we are going to come some day to the grafted chestnuts,
especially in the South, because a lot of the southern producers right
now are giving a black eye to Chinese chestnuts, because they are
shipping lots of mixed nuts, and by the time they get to the consumer
half of them are rotten. This will ruin the market. We have been buying
some six or seven thousand pounds of nuts to ship to Italy, and we know
something about the conditions of nuts when they reach us. There is no
quicker way of killing a market than to be shipping in a whole lot of
nuts that are going to spoil or are in the process of spoiling when they
reach the consumer. Grafted varieties are one way of getting away from
this, especially in the South.

MR. WILSON: I am far enough south so that in peach production we often
have winters so warm that the trees don't wake up. This question of rest
period is quite important with us. We have a warm winter, and the
Mayflower peach just keeps on sleeping. Eventually bloom will break, and
a little peach will sit up there waiting for the leaf to come out. There
is apparently a rest period with the Chinese chestnut there also. The
time of breaking of the rest period in my seedling trees varies as much
as three to four weeks, and that would lead me to believe that, in the
long run, we will have to plant locally adapted varieties.

PRESIDENT BEST: I am sorry that we have to stop this very interesting
discussion.

At this time is there any item of general interest to the group that
anyone would like to bring up?

MR. MILLER: For sometime I have been considering the desirability of
changing the name of the Northern Nut Growers. I am inclined to think
that maybe some of our southern friends or from the Far West or
Southwest would be a little dubious of joining the Northern Nut Growe