still living. At the present time I have
perhaps five Carr trees that will average six inches or more in
diameter. The oldest is the one by the side, of the house. The rest of
them were grafted about 1935. One out of those five, when it got to be
about six inches in diameter, in fact, about three years ago, it went
bad. It is girdled and dead. It was grafted about as high as this table
from the ground. The others are sound, and you'd find it very difficult
to find where they were grafted.
I have Hobson, perhaps a dozen trees anywhere from six to 16 years old,
and I have not had a failure on a Hobson that really was once healed
over properly and got to bearing, not one. That's concrete evidence,
Doctor, and that's all I wish to say.
Rev. Taylor (Alpine, Tenn.): Mr. Gravatt was about to answer a question
about our seed trees, wasn't he?
Mr. Gravatt: Would you repeat that question?
Rev. Taylor: Are some seed trees better than others in the high per cent
of good seedlings they produce?
Mr. Gravatt: Well, McKay has done some work and published it to show
that on seedlings of certain trees you get higher percentage of bud
takes than on others.
Mr. Chase: I think the question is a little confused. I think what you
are after is, are there parent seed trees from which seed can be planted
that would produce a good quality of seedlings.
Rev. Taylor: Yes, of good productive seedlings. No grafting to it.
Mr. Chase: I think that was answered. Apparently there are.
Rev. Taylor: Apparently there are in China, as Dr. Crane brought up.
Mr. Chase: He further brought up that those things are in the process of
being tested here now, and he hopes for some information in--what was
that?
Mr. Gravatt: We had Professor Beattie over in Japan, China, and Korea
for two or three years, and he found in Japan that there were certain
selections there, certain grafted varieties that they used for seed
stock. We imported those into this country. We were getting ready to go
ahead with the Japs. We also brought in a hundred varieties of Japanese
chestnuts. But the Japanese varieties didn't do well here. What would
produce well over in Japan didn't produce well here. But a number of
those scions that we grafted in 1932 and 1933 are still living. We have
had very good success with top-working chestnuts in our orchards. We
have some grafts there of pure Chinese chestnuts top-worked on some
worthless Japanese. Some of those have been t
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