y short. I have copies of
these letters, four letters out of 50 or 60 that I prepared.

DR. CRANE: Mr. Jay Smith. We are going to have to limit this to not over
three minutes' time.

MR. JAY SMITH: My experience is somewhat limited. I have a few seedling
trees that are good, and I have a few named varieties that seem to be
good. I just want to point out one reason why we should have a number of
varieties. One of my choice varieties in my back yard has five nuts on
it this year, and it has produced a good crop other years. And the
answer seems to be that the pollen came out during a period of very
rainy weather and the tree did not fertilize. Now, other trees
apparently blossomed before or after, mostly after, but this one was a
rather early blooming tree, and I have more nuts on other types of
trees.

One of my good seedling trees has very few nuts on this year. Possibly
that might be for a similar reason. So regardless of how good these
varieties may be, we must have several varieties. Don't put all your
eggs in one basket.

I have some good filberts that came from Geneva, and they have had
trouble with wood damage due to the beetles laying eggs in the wood, and
the beetles may possibly have come from nearby willows. And I have had
some of the willow growing, too, because I thought it looked nice. Now I
have cut down all of the willow, and there is some birch in the
neighborhood, and I understand the birch harbors this same thing, some
variety of Agrilus beetle,[7] and we have a lot of angles to work on in
order to get rid of our drawbacks. And we have the matters of season
and soil and elevation. It's quite a big problem.

[7] Agrilus anxius Gory, the bronze birch borer.

DR. CRANE: It ~is~ a big problem, but we will never settle it the way we
are going. We have got to do better.

MR. STOKE: I don't know whether I have anything that is really pertinent
to say. The thought I had in mind should have come sooner. That is: Why
are we growing nuts? There are two angles from which we can approach
that, two natural angles. Here is the angle of the amateur that wants to
grow nuts to eat. After all, that's what I suppose they are for. There
is the commercial grower who wants to grow them to make a profit, and I
think we should approach our subject, evaluation of nuts, from either
one of those two angles, or work along two different channels. I think
that's very necessary.

You take the Elberta peach. If you want a pe