nt of Agriculture as the scene of their experiments in
fighting the chestnut blight, but they have given it up, withdrawn their
efforts, and half the orchard is now cut down and planted to Winesap and
Grimes Golden Apples, which ten year's experience has shown me can be
grown on such land without cultivation if mulched with the weeds and
bushes that grow around them, and given some commercial fertilizer. I
have a number of such young trees planted in 1907 in land of this
character that are now full of fine quality fruit.

My third nut-growing attempt was with more select strains of seedling
English walnuts than the miserable chancelings with which I began. One
tree from the magnificent specimens at 3115 O street, N. W., Washington,
D. C., and several from Pomeroy, promptly perished, apparently from
winter-killing, and my nut hopes were at a very low ebb when the
Northern Nut Growers' Association came upon my intellectual horizon.
From it I have learned how to graft the walnut, the pecan and other
hickories, and I have again started in on the English walnut, using the
Mayette, Franquette, and several of the eastern seedlings. After the
usual disastrous failures at top-working, I was this June in such a
large condition of hope that I was in serious need of being hooped to
keep myself down to normal size. Such artificial aids to the maintenance
of normal size are, however, no longer necessary after this summer's
experiences, during which the bud-worm has cut the ends of my Persian
walnut shoots and the blight apparently has withered up my young grafts
so that an 18 inch shoot of July 1st is now 17 inches black and 1 inch
brownish green, and in other cases entirely dead. Alas what a slaughter!
This apparently puts my Persian walnut hopes into a state of neutrality.
I hope it is benevolent neutrality. So far as actual expecting is
concerned, however, I am not doing any just now. I wait.

The grafted black walnuts, however, have met with none of these
accidents, and these are a substantial and solid hope, as is the pecan,
which is behaving handsomely on its own roots and also on the hickory
roots.

_Tree Crops Insurance._

As my experience with nut trees well shows, there is little doubt that
we are now in a period of great activity of plant enemies. They are
indeed a by-product of the splendid work now being done in bringing to
us the crop plants of all parts of the world. Along with the Chinese and
Japanese products w