are getting a little bit off.

DR. CRANE: We are off, way off.

DR. MacDANIELS: How to get a new variety I don't think is what we are
trying to decide this evening. As I have looked at this whole field of
what we are trying to do, I think we have analogies that we can point
to. I think any project of this kind in nut varieties goes through
various stages. The first is finding what material there is that is
available that you can use. The next is the evaluation of that material
to see what's worth keeping, and setting up your standards of what you
are trying to get, and then from then on out perhaps breeding that sort
of thing.

Now, as far as we are concerned, it seems to me the Northern Nut
Growers' Association made a pretty good stab at surveying the materials
available. In other words, I think an additional nut contest is not
going to turn up the perfect nut. That is, we have one contest after
another, and the ones that win the first prizes as the best nuts we can
find are not markedly better. There is no great difference away from the
average that we have had in the others.

I think that's a valuable thing to keep going along so we don't miss a
trick and let anything be lost. But the next thing is to take these
things that we have selected and evaluate them, and it seems tome that's
exactly where we stand at the present time.

I also think that we should not in this situation get ideas that are too
big. That is, if you get something that's impossible, you are licked
before you start. If you have got to wait before you do anything and
make a complete study of chromosomes of any one of these nut trees,
99.44 percent of the Northern Nut Growers Association might as well quit
doing it. I am not capable of doing it, and Dr. McKay is probably the
only one that is capable of looking at these things from that
standpoint. But we have, it seems to me, to use the machinery we have
and take some definite action which will be of some value within a year
or perhaps two.

I agree that this idea of putting the State Vice-presidents to work is a
very good thing. I think each one could if we could find the right
man--take his state and divide it into two parts, and also take in
groups of growers of nut trees that are members, and all the others that
we can find, and get their pooled opinions on what varieties are
available, together with the record of these varieties in that
particular locality.

Then I think on the basis o