rs a comparatively
small per cent of them are attacked. It is thus possible to produce
chestnut nursery stock that for several years does not show the disease.

So far as I can see, the chestnut blight is not stopping naturally in
its course anywhere. I cannot get a particle of reliable evidence that
it is. In this part of the country and to the south of here, in
Virginia, for example, the parasite has more months in the year during
which it can grow, it appears to be utilizing that time in spreading
more rapidly, at least killing trees more quickly, than to the north of
this area. From the standpoint of the grower of nuts, the important
question is, of course, whether the disease can be controlled. I think
your Secretary, in a recent article, summed the situation up as clearly
and briefly as can be done. He said, in an article entitled "The
Progress of Nut Culture in the East:"

"Of the chestnut we have excellent varieties such as the Rochester,
Boone and Paragon, but all development in the culture of this nut is
being held up by the blight. Everybody is awaiting the results of the
government work in breeding immune hybrids. There may be great
opportunities, nevertheless, in chestnut growing outside its native
area, where the blight can be controlled."

There is no doubt that in an orchard tree, in chestnut orchards, the
disease can be controlled within reason by the cutting out method that
has long been advocated, but the point is that the margin of profit on
the chestnut is not sufficient to make that method pay, and whenever
members of this Association or others interested in the propagation of
chestnuts have written to me for advice I have simply advised them not
to plant chestnuts at present. I cannot see at the present time, that
any attempt at control is profitable. That is a very different thing
from saying that it can not be done, or that it may not later become
profitable.

A few words regarding the method of spread of the disease. In 1908, when
the office of which I have charge was first organized, Professor
Collins, who has addressed this Association a number of times regarding
this disease, visited a number of orchards and nurseries in the Eastern
States, going as far as southern Virginia to the south, and west as far
as York county, Pennsylvania, Although that was comparatively early in
the progress of the disease, wherever he went, without exception, where
there was a nursery, he found the disease pr