pectfully submitted,

WILLARD G. BIXBY.
Secretary-Treasurer.

THE PRESIDENT: This is a very good report, complete in every detail, and
unless other action is desired, it will be received and recorded in the
minutes of the meeting.

Mr. Reed, you are chairman of the committee that had in charge the
tree-planting bill in order that it might be made uniform throughout the
country. Have you a report to make?

MR. REED: Mr. President, the committee members have been over that
individually but have not had an opportunity to discuss it together. If
a full report can be had a little later I think that would be more
satisfactory. So far as I have been able to go into it the law seems to
about cover the ground. I could not make any suggestions as to how it
could be improved. I happen to know that the author of the bill, who is
our president, has been called upon by several other states to discuss
such a law for those states, and I think he is in the best position to
tell us if there are any holes in it. If we can have the consent of the
house we will defer a full report until we can discuss the matter with
our president and with our committee as a whole.

THE PRESIDENT: We will take that course unless there are objections.

The communications received by the acting secretary will be filed and
printed in the proceedings. If there are no vice-presidents present who
are prepared to make reports that order will be passed. At this time
should come the appointment of committees but I think it would be well
to defer that business until we can consult as to the membership of the
committees. The next in order will be some remarks by Mr. Littlepage
about the proposed afternoon excursion.

THE ACTING SECRETARY: The speakers are Dr. Van Fleet, Mr. Littlepage and
Professor Close. I have here the resume of Dr. Van Fleet and I think
that it would be better perhaps to read the report of Dr. Van Fleet at
once as it may have some bearing on the remarks of Mr. Littlepage and
Professor Close.

CHESTNUT WORK AT BELL EXPERIMENT PLOT

DR. WALTER VAN FLEET, GLENDALE, MARYLAND

Our breeding work with chestnuts began as far back as 1894 when
pistillate blooms of the Paragon variety, then a novelty just coming
into use, were dusted with pollen from a native sweet chestnut bearing
good-sized nuts. The Paragon stigma were protected from the influence of
other pollen by bagging and gave a good set of fruits. The idea was to
improve th