ine city.

THE PRESIDENT: Next on the program will come the report of the
secretary.

THE SECRETARY: I regret the smallness of the secretary's
accomplishment for the past year. Except for the editing of the annual
report--which is much a matter of cutting out superfluous words--and the
effort to get speakers for this convention, he has attempted very
little.

This is not, however, for lack of things that could and should have been
done. An energetic campaign for new members is the most obvious
desideratum. The committee to prepare and issue a bulletin on the
roadside planting of nut trees, arranged to give information for every
part of the country, has been innocuous as well as useless. Perhaps this
meeting will afford stimulus and material enough to get it to work.

I think that few of the members realize how the inactivity of the
secretary has been more than made up for by the industry of the
treasurer. Perhaps they are reciprocally cause and consequence. Not only
has the treasurer discharged the usual duties of that office but he has
also attended to most of the correspondence and clerical work. He has
conducted the nut contests which, under his management, have developed
to formidable proportions requiring immense expenditure of time and
effort.

These nut contests have now become so widely known as to return us a
good idea of what we may expect of the native nuts of the country.
Undoubtedly we have not yet found the best nuts that this country
produces, except perhaps in the case of the pecan. But Mr. Bixby's
labors, continuing the work begun by Dr. Morris, have reached such
results that I think he will be willing to say that we have nearly
reached the limit of natural excellence in the nuts already discovered.

In fact it seems to me that we have reached the point where further
improvement in nuts for cultivation is to be looked for especially from
purposeful hybridizing by man. It should be another of the chief aims of
this association to induce self-perpetuating institutions to get
together the material necessary for such work. Such material already
exists in incomplete form--incomplete, that is, especially in
horticultural varieties--as in the Arnold Arboretum and in the Public
Park at Rochester. The Arnold Arboretum, through our treasurer's
efforts, has agreed to give more attention to nut growing and breeding.
The St. Louis Botanical Garden and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden,
through the efforts and ge