altogether. We have
never had the semblance of blight. Our cultivation has been thorough.
Our fertilization has been consistent. Mr. Vollertsen has been on the
job very steadily and understands his business thoroughly. I think that
this talk of blight is something that we should not take so seriously to
heart. On half a dozen occasions some of our good friends have said,
"What about the blight; don't you think it will wipe you out?" I think
it is well to be prepared for the truth but the same thing might be said
if I plant a peach orchard, that in a few years it will be wiped out by
the yellows. I can't make myself believe that the matter of blight in
filbert culture in this country is a serious menace. The consensus of
opinion in this association seems to have been that even if it does
appear there are remedies for it. Our esteemed first president, Dr.
Morris, when he visited our place in Rochester some years ago when the
convention met there, said that he thought we should not worry about it.
He was satisfied that if blight appeared it could be controlled by the
removal of the blighted part. I believe that the same principle applies
to the development of filbert nurseries as to any phase of life, that
eternal vigilance is the price of safety. I believe that thorough
cultivation, keeping the plants strong and healthy, will help them
resist disease. But if blight does appear, by watching closely it can be
removed and I think controlled, as suggested by Dr. Morris. Maybe it has
been all right up to the present time to be on our guard but there is
my work that has been going on for ten or twelve years. During these
last two or three years we have been sending our plants all over the
country, to California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa,
Indiana, Canada, and we have been getting fine reports with not a single
reference to the appearance of blight. On the contrary they report that
our plants are fruiting and they ask for more plants. As a specific
instance I can cite a prominent doctor in Louisville, Kentucky, who some
years ago got some plants from us and some filbert plants from some
other nursery. We had a letter from him the other day in which he spoke
in most complimentary terms of the plants he had gotten from us, that
they had fruited, were true, and he wanted to know if we could furnish
him from fifteen hundred to two thousand plants within the next few
years. William Rockefeller on the Hudson, another