ry part of the United States. There at Ithaca
we have the difficulties with the Persian walnut mainly of winter cold.
That is the absolute low temperature that wipes out the trees, now that
I have seen them come and go in my place there and in the vicinity. The
old Pomeroy strain is killed at about 20 below zero Fahrenheit. It
stayed there in fairly good condition up in the Lockport region until
the extreme cold of 1933-34. Once the temperatures went down to nearly
30 below zero, except for a small region around the Niagara peninsula,
where it hit only 12. Those trees are still there in that little
circumscribed area around Niagara, and we saw a picture of one of them
in Mr. Sherman's collection. But the Pomeroy trees, I have learned--I
haven't seen them myself--were practically wiped out, as were the
others, in what was thought to be the protected area along Lake Erie.

I remember the trees on the Whitecroft farm along Keuka Lake. Some of
you saw those when the Nut Growers Association met at Geneva. They are
on a bench close to Keuka Lake, which up to 1933-34 had not been frozen
over for many years. They had grown, produced good crops, were in
excellent condition, but that year the temperature went down to about 30
below zero and stayed there for a number of days. The lake froze over,
and the trees were severely damaged. A California redwood which was
there--had been there for 80 years--was killed outright, and so it goes.

Now, just for these Carpathian strains it seems to me that we have
pretty well--perhaps you might say--licked this question of winter cold;
that is, at least down to perhaps 30, 35 below zero Fahrenheit, but we
certainly haven't licked the problem of early vegetation. That is, it
starts out with warm days in the spring, the shoots get about this long
(indicating), you get temperature going down to, say, 26, 27, 28, and
your shoots are all killed back and you have lost your year's crop. So
that's the problem which in the selection of varieties for this northern
country, we have got to keep in mind, as I think that's one thing to
look for among your Carpathian trees. It's one which will mature its
foliage in the fall fairly early and which does not start out too
quickly in the spring.

Now, we know there are some that don't start out in the spring, like
these Chinese types, but what we want is a combination of short-season,
late-starting, winter-hardy walnuts, and I think we can find them if we
keep