there has been no indication that the
blight will extend beyond the chestnut group as a parasite, although you
can inoculate oaks and other trees with the fungus and it will live in
them, but only on the dead portion of the tree and not as the parasite
lives on the chestnut.

Prof. Smith: I should like to ask Mr. Sober if he has found any evidence
that the paragon chestnut differs from the native chestnut in resistance
to the blight, and if his paragons are different from other paragons?

Col. Sober: I cannot say whether my chestnuts are different from the
other paragon chestnuts or not, or whether they are as resistant to the
blight. I know it is a very sweet chestnut. In regard to keeping my
groves clean--from 1901 to 1910, we had three broods of locusts and two
hailstorms that opened the bark in almost every tree and branch. The
limbs were stung by the locusts thousands of times, so that I didn't
have a crop of chestnuts. Professor Davis was cutting off limbs for a
couple of months so you see my trees were open, if any ever were, to
receive the blight. The hailstorms destroyed the leaves and I didn't
have any chestnuts that year in one part of my grove and with all
that--you people come and see how clean it is, that's all there is to
it. I know what I've done and what I can do.

The Chairman: The next paper in order is that of Professor Smith.

NUT GROWING AND TREE BREEDING AND THEIR RELATION TO CONSERVATION

PROFESSOR J. RUSSELL SMITH, PENNSYLVANIA

Prof. Smith: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen; I am going to ask your
indulgence for including in my subject a matter that perhaps goes a
little beyond the scope of this organization, for I wish to speak of
fruit as well as nut-bearing trees. Conservation, whose object is the
preservation of our resources for future generations, as well as for
ourselves, finds its greatest problem in the preservation of the soil.
The forests can come again if the soil be left. It is probable that we
can find substitutes for coal, and for nearly everything else, but once
the soil is gone, all is gone; and the greatest danger to the soil is
not robbery by ill cropping, because no matter how man may abuse the
soil, scientific agriculture can bring it back with astonishing speed.
But the greatest enemy of conservation is erosion, the best checks for
erosion are roots.

Thus far, the only man who has been telling us anything about planting
roots upon the hillsides is the for