ive. What percentage of pollen
grains of the white oak were alive? I do not know. Enough to fertilize
a number of flowers. The sooner pollen is used the better. I cannot
answer the question exactly because I did not make an experiment in the
laboratory to know what part of the pollen was viable. I put on a good
deal of it and there were at least some viable grains in the lot. That,
however, is a matter which can be subjected to exact laboratory tests
without any difficulty. I am so busy with so many things that I can only
follow the plan of the guinea hen that lays forty eggs and sits in the
middle of the nest and hatches out all she can. Now the range of time
for pollinizing is a thing of very great importance and we have to learn
about it. We must all furnish notes on this question. With some species
I presume the duration of life of pollen, even under the best
conditions, might be only a few days. Under other conditions it may be
several weeks; but we have to remember that, in dealing with pollen, we
are dealing with a living, breathing organism.

The Secretary: I believe the experiment has been carried to completion
of fruiting a thousand trees from nuts grown on one pecan tree without
two of the resulting nuts being like one another or like the parent nut.
Is that true, Mr. Reed.

Mr. Reed: Yes, you might say ten thousand.

The Secretary: We have an illustration of the variability of the progeny
of a nut in this collection of chestnuts by Mr. Riehl out in Illinois.
This is a parent nut, the Rochester, and these others are seedlings from
the Rochester, except where marked otherwise, some showing a tendency to
revert to the parent, and some promising to be improvements on the
parents.

The Chairman: Mr. Secretary, I think we'd better confine ourselves to
the hybrid question at the present time.

The Secretary: Are not those all hybrids?

The Chairman: I don't believe any man can tell, unless you get the
flowers, because you have the American and European types merging
together so perfectly. Some of them show distinctly the European type;
others show distinctly the American type. That is what I would expect,
however. The practical point is the question of quality. Which one keeps
the American quality and which one retains the coarseness of the
European type?

Mr. Harris: Speaking of variations of nuts I think it is well known that
there is quite a variation in the nuts of the oak. I noticed in one
species, mi