ican
chestnut about an inch in diameter which had a typical hypertrophy of
the disease, apparently completely girdling the sprout at its base; also
a girdling lesion farther up on the stem. The hypertrophy was such a
pronounced one and in other respects such a typical example of the
disease that I photographed it. A few years later I was surprised to
observe that this sprout had increased to more than three times its
former diameter and that the two diseased areas just mentioned
apparently had disappeared--at least they were no longer in evidence
except as rough-barked areas. To make a long story short this sprout is
still alive and has increased in size and height each year. Although now
(1924) it is considerably branched and makes a small bushy tree it is
badly diseased in numerous places and is only partially alive, but the
dead portions have not resulted from some half dozen of the original
disease lesions (apparently girdles), but from later infections. The
very fact that a sprout should have lived for more than twelve years in
the center of one of the most badly diseased areas known to the writer
seems at least to suggest the possibility that future chestnut sprouts
may yet grow in spite of the disease and persist--at least in a
shrubbery form if not as a tree.

The sprout to which I have just called attention is not an isolated
case, but merely one of the most pronounced that I know about. In a
careful survey in July (1924) of the region immediately surrounding the
sprout just mentioned two or three other notable, but less pronounced,
cases of a similar sort were discovered. In two cases fine looking
branched sprouts some twenty feet high with healthy-looking foliage were
noted. Both were diseased but the disease seemed not to be very
conspicuous or virulent. In a recent survey of woodland in Rhode Island
(July, 1924) much healthy foliage was observed and several large sprouts
were found on which the disease (although present) seemed to be doing
little damage when compared with its former virulence in the same
general region.

I call attention to these cases primarily to acquaint you with the
results of our latest observations on what seems to me to be cases of
gradually developing resistance in some of the remaining sprouts. In all
my intensive work on the blight between 1907 and 1913 I cannot now
recall a single instance where a chestnut sprout in a disease-ridden
area ever reached a diameter of an inch or th