uit buds, but the normal amount is necessary for the
formation of buds.

MR. MCDANIEL: We have even got alternate bearing on persimmons in Urbana
now. Trees that bore extremely heavily didn't bloom this year.

MR. MAGILL: We hill-billies have been taking a pass at that. I wonder if
Dr. Slate couldn't give us some scientific facts about this. How about
it, Slate?

DR. SLATE: Mr. Caldwell's remarks about the beating of the walnut trees
in China reminds me of an ancient saying that, "A dog, a woman, a walnut
tree, the more you beat them the better they be."

MR. DAVIDSON: One of my seedlings began to bear seven years ago, and has
borne steadily every year exceptionally large crops. It never failed
until this year, and the only explanation that I can give is that just
as the bloom was incepted we had continuous rains. There was no
pollination of that tree, whereas other trees that were receptive at
other times are pretty well filled.

Out of two or three thousand trees you will find some exceptional ones.
I have some that bear fairly good crops but do not fill. Walnut trees
are just as different from each other as are apple trees. There are some
things you can't do anything about at all, and weather is one of the
things. One shouldn't be too much mystified by an occasional failure,
because it may be due to continuous rains during the period of
pollination and when they are receptive.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: This matter of alternate bearing is one that has
plagued the pomologist for a great many years, and one in which we made
little progress, with apples for example, until with hormone sprays the
trees could be thinned very early in the year. Any thinning done after
the fruit was the size of your thumb was too late. However, now that the
fruit can be thinned when it is very young, real progress is being made
in securing annual bearing on varieties that previously were a serious
problem in alternate bearing.

The failure to fruit is due to many different factors. Some of these are
external such as frost and rain at pollen shedding. There is nothing you
can do about these. Other factors are internal and determine the
formation of fruit buds. If the tree is carrying an exceptionally heavy
crop, the chances are it will not have enough of the material which
determines the setting of buds to form buds for the following year. With
the apples we can do something about this by thinning the crop at the
time it blooms. With wal