INGS.

Owing to present war conditions the president would recommend that
selection of the next place of meeting be left to executive committee
to be fixed later after conditions and crops for next year are better
assured. It would seem that some central location might draw the largest
attendance and be of greatest benefit to the association for the coming
year.

NUT EXHIBITS.

Nut exhibits should be encouraged as much as possible and prizes offered
when finances will permit, or where members offer special premiums. This
effort will bring out varieties that are worthy of propagation and
valuable trees will be saved to posterity. These exhibits can often be
held in connection with local horticultural meetings. It is well for our
members to keep a watch for such chances.

REASONS FOR OUR LIMITED KNOWLEDGE AS TO WHAT VARIETIES OF NUT TREES TO
PLANT.

PROF. W. N. HUTT, NORTH CAROLINA.

Agriculturally this continent is about three centuries old.
Horticulturally its experience has scarcely reached the century mark.
Practically all the commercial fruit industry of the United States is
the product of the last half century. Relatively speaking we are quite
young and therefore there are a great many things about nut-growing that
we may not be expected to know. In the older lands of Europe and Asia
they have a horticultural experience going back from ten to twenty
centuries.

In this new country the pioneers had necessarily to confine themselves
to the fundamentals and it is to be expected that their horticultural
operations were confined to a very narrow maintenance ratio. As the
country was cleared up and developed certain sections were found to be
especially suited to fruit culture. About these centers specialized
fruit-growing industries were developed. These planters tried out all
available varieties and developed their own methods of culture. As these
industries developed horticultural societies were formed for the
exchanging of ideas and experiences. In 1847 the American Pomological
Society was formed as a national clearing house of horticultural ideas.

The first work the society undertook was to determine the varieties of
the different classes of fruits suitable for planting in different
sections of the country. Patrick Barry, of Rochester, one of the
pioneers of American horticulture was for years the chairman of the
committees on varietal adaptation and did an immense amount of work on
that line.