device, worked out and used for three
centuries by the olive growers of Tunis, for twenty years by Dr. Mayer,
of Pennsylvania, and about the same length of time by Colonel Freeman
Thorpe, Minnesota, can from the point of theory and perhaps also from
the point of practice, equal tillage on some soils, and with less labor
and much greater economy in farm management, for the making of water
pots is a job for odd times, the bane of agriculture, and tillage all
comes in a pile--another bane of agriculture.

Upon the whole, I think my 21 years of nut loving have run me directly
and indirectly into ten thousand hard earned, and as yet, partly not
earned dollars. Rather a deep sting for a pedagogue. When the last of my
grafted chestnut trees come down next year, I will have little to show
for that ten thousand, but an experimental nursery and some experimental
trees scattered about the hillside. But the experiments are still
interesting. I still have hope, and I still love trees. I am still
ahead.

* * * * *

THE PRESIDENT: I believe every other man here today has defended his
thesis. I will not claim any exemption.

DR. STABLER: The President has mentioned the combination of apple and
walnut trees. I would like to ask him if he has seen any deleterious
effects upon the apple from the proximity of walnut roots. Now, some of
my friends in Montgomery county have the idea that an apple tree will
not live within fifty feet of a walnut tree. I have, myself, seen a
number of apple trees die, apparently because they were neighbors of
walnut trees. I wasn't sure that that was the cause of death, but they
died, and walnut trees situated in an apple orchard will have a ring of
dead apple trees around them. Now that is one case that I know of where
the walnut tree acts injuriously upon the vegetation to which it is
neighbor. All of the farm crops, wheat, corn, grass, and oats, and rye,
etc., seem to thrive just as well under the limbs of a black walnut as
they do away from it. In fact, frequently you see the grass greener and
more luxuriant right up to the trunk of the tree than anywhere else, but
it doesn't seem to be true of the apple. Now, I would like to hear from
the President.

THE PRESIDENT: I simply made that as a suggestion and referred to this
instance as an illustration of the effect of fertilization on the
walnut.

DR. AUGUSTUS STABLER: Well, how are those apple trees doing?

THE PRESID