ause of a different variety?

MR. HUNT: Oh, yes, I think so.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, in view of this information about the
chestnut, is there the slightest use in the world for this Association
to encourage anybody to plant chestnuts anywhere in the United States?

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kellerman is here, and I wish to refer to him Mr.
Littlepage's question with a slight addition. Is there, first, any
prospect of any place staying immune? Second, would it not be to the
advantage of the country if the sale of chestnut stock were stopped?

DR. KARL F. KELLERMAN: Mr. President, to answer those questions involves
a rather large contract on my part. (Laughter). In the first place, the
problem of growing and marketing chestnuts, I think, is one that I could
hardly be expected fairly to discuss. I am here rather to explain the
attitude and action of the Federal Horticultural Board than to try to
give any constructive advice to the nut growers.

The Federal Horticultural Board is a board of five men to advise the
Secretary of Agriculture in establishing plant quarantines, either on
the introduction of plant material into the United States, or on the
movement of plant material inside the United States within the
quarantined areas. The Horticultural Board, therefore, has to deal more
with actual conditions than with outlining such policies as your
chairman has asked me to outline.

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, Dr. Kellerman, but we wish to know if there
is, in your opinion, any prospect of any region remaining immune?

DR. KELLERMAN: Well, even that is going rather further than I would like
to go, and yet the negative answer to that question is practically the
basis on which the Federal Horticultural Board decided that it was
impracticable to quarantine infected areas at the present time. The
evidence at hand appears to indicate conclusively that if the trees
that are to be grown are distinctly susceptible to the disease they will
almost certainly have an opportunity to become infected, no matter what
part of the United States they may be grown in. Now, whether that
infection would be a matter of a few months, or a few years, or a few
decades, of course, would be altogether a matter of chance, but, with
the wide distribution of nursery stock that is infected, with native
chestnuts rather generally infected and continuing to be infected, and
with practically no chance of preventing the continuation of the disease
in the n