Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, as far south as Virginia, and as far
west as western Pennsylvania and eastern West Virginia. Throughout this
area it is spreading by what I may call natural means, and the disease
has been shown to be unusually well provided with means of
dissemination. I will speak a little later about the spread of the
disease outside of this area--that is, west and south, since in the West
and in the South it is being spread, as far as we know, exclusively by
human agencies.

The question is often asked me, "What is the future of the
chestnut--that is, the native chestnut--in this country? What is the
course of the disease going to be?" The only way in which we can answer
that is to look in the parts of the country where the disease has been
present longest--Long Island, for example; Westchester county, New York;
Bergen county, New Jersey; Fairfield county, Conn. Upon a recent
examination of those areas I found no chestnut trees surviving in a
healthy condition. We have, of course, from the beginning, hunted, and
hunted hard, to find individual chestnut trees that might be immune to
the disease--native American chestnuts. We expected to find such trees,
but up to date we have not found them. It is a very extraordinary fact
and an almost unparalleled fact, because with the majority of plants
affected, by any given disease, we can find some individuals that are
not only resistant, but immune.

Now, in these old areas, particularly on Long Island, in 1907, when the
disease first came under my observation, I marked certain trees in order
to observe how long the stumps of these trees or the dead trees would
continue to send up sprouts from the ground. It is an interesting fact
that some of those trees which were dead in 1907 are still putting up
sprouts. The sprouting capacity of the chestnut tree is indeed
marvelous, but I am sorry to say that I haven't been able to find any
healthy sprouts over three years old. I haven't been able to find any
living sprouts more than four years old. The disease seems to be
following up the sprouts as it followed up the original stem.

Right there, in the behavior of the disease toward the sprouts, we have
an interesting fact. During the first year of its life the chestnut tree
or the chestnut sprout is immune to this disease, or practically so. You
can rarely find a seedling or sprout of the first year that is attacked
by the disease, and even in the second or third yea