crop. As a forest dies, a new crop of trees spring up. Even
a dead tree gives rise to a whole creation of countless bacteria and
fungi.

So on "ad infinitum." Members who have talked and studied our problems
in the past have made possible our work here today. So, likewise, our
words will sleep with the others from whom we have borrowed. So, to
escape with a good conscience, to avoid having fingers pointed at me, of
hearing cries of--"you stole this from me," I will try to give credit
where credit is due.

Otherwise, I might be, figuratively speaking, stripped of my material
here piece by piece, and I would finally stand before you with hardly a
loin cloth of an idea which I could call my own.

There is a popular appeal to the nut business which most of us are
susceptible to,--like wanting to produce large nuts,--and of seeing the
first nut,--and to again gather nuts like we did as children. Ask a man
how large a nut he found and he will lie as he will about a fish he has
just caught.

Then, there is the romantic visionary who would transform the whole
universe into a sort of fairyland nut grove--where there are no insects,
diseases, or squirrels,--and where the nuts fall polished into open
bags.

Then, there are those of us--and I am one--who reasoning that the
"groves were God's first temples," flee to a twilight hill top or to a
forest shade, and, as Mr. Stokes said, "Sit humbly at the feet of the
great mother of us all. There is wisdom and healing in the shadow of her
wings."

We need this philosophical attitude to generate encouragement and
inspiration to withstand the hard knocks that we have had--and will have
coming. But, the NNGA must be more realistic and really do some
grappling.

Read the experiences which all our reports are filled with. Mr. G. A.
Miller on page 99 of the 1940 report handles this matter of success and
failure very well. We live on our successes and not on our failures. Nut
culture is pioneering, and it is well to be fully aware of the
possibility of failure so that we may be steeled for it when it comes.
Failure makes our successes sweeter.

Abraham Lincoln's life was a series of failures. Thomas Edison usually
failed. Plant breeders at our stations nearly always fail. But, once in
a while they succeed. In the nut business, if we succeed 1 in 10,000
times, success may be cheap at that.

Dr. MacDaniels stated so many important aspects of the NNGA that I want
to list his outline h