ative chestnuts, abundant sources for infection of susceptible
material appear to exist. For that reason, it appears to be, from an
economic standpoint, inadvisable to attempt to check the disease through
the establishment of quarantines.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Kellerman, you have answered my first question to
perfection, and now I want to ask the second one. If this blight is
practically a sure-kill, isn't it wrong to permit people to spend money
in the hope that, in some way, they are going to escape it? And if that
is the case, why shouldn't the whole traffic in chestnut trees be
stopped, with the possible exception of experimental things, which might
be allowed with the direct permission of some governmental board?

DR. KELLERMAN: That is a question that is very much harder to answer.
There might be favored regions where orchard culture of the chestnut
could go on for a considerable term of years before infections became
general and before the industry would be stifled because of this
disease. That is merely a matter of conjecture, as I see it. We have so
little evidence as to the speed with which a paying orchard business can
be developed in a new locality, so little evidence as to how the disease
may act under widely separated climatic conditions, that I don't feel
that we are prepared to say definitely that the industry is bound to
fail in every place where it is tried. Personally, I think that it ought
to be considered only on an experimental basis, but that represents
merely my personal opinion, and I doubt whether there is any effective
means for establishing a policy of that sort. It might be possible for
the general advice to be given that there was danger in any orchard
planting of chestnuts, no matter where it might be undertaken, and of a
comparatively rapid loss through the chestnut blight. I doubt whether
more than that would be feasible.

THE PRESIDENT: I have been enthusiastic over the chestnut for twenty
years this season, and these are matters in which I am greatly
interested. As I see it, the problem is one that is really much bigger
than the chestnut. The whole field of nut growing, which is now on the
edge of great accomplishments, is likely to be seriously injured,
because the most conspicuous thing in nut growing is the taking
advertisement of the firm whose bad trees have been referred to by Dr.
Metcalf. I think we do not appreciate the seriousness of the situation.
The firm Dr. Metcalf referre