sions of the disease showed if
they were examined carefully. The fact that it has been there for many
years is, I think, questioned by no one at the present time. Its growth
in China seems to be somewhat different, in fact in many cases quite
different, from the growth on the American and the European chestnut
trees. It is rather of the type that we are familiar with on the
resistant Japanese trees. More-over, it appears on some of the trees as
shown in the photographs which I will pass around. The appearance of the
disease more closely resembles, in some ways, what we are familiar with
in the European apple canker as it appears on the apple trees. I think
those who are familiar with the apple canker will notice the
resemblance, in at least one or two of these photographs. Now, I don't
mean by that that it is the same as the apple canker, but I do want to
call your attention to its appearance in these photographs, and at the
same time, to tell you something that Mr. Meyer wrote about this disease
as it appeared in China. He said he found no trees that were absolutely
killed by the disease. This may mean, and probably does, that the
Chinese tree is resistant, to a certain extent, to this disease; that
is, it shows a certain amount of resistance, much in the same way that
the Japanese chestnut tree does to the disease in this country.

For some years (as some of you will remember, I think) there have been
two different views as to the origin of this disease. One is that it is
a native fungus which, for some reason, has assumed a parasitic form;
the other that it is an imported disease. The principal reasons for the
latter view are that it spreads in this country on the American chestnut
in much the same manner that other imported diseases have spread on
other plants. The fact is that this disease (so far as we can find
absolutely identical with the American form) has been found in China;
about this point there is no doubt at all, and I think we can safely
say, although we cannot absolutely prove it at this time, that the
disease in this country was imported from the Orient. What bearing this
will have on the question of control of the disease in this country
remains to be seen.

Have we any chestnuts which show immunity to this disease? The American
chestnut is subject to it in its most virulent form. There are of course
a number of varieties of the American chestnut which have been
cultivated. Of these the two which I h