th his
panel, D. C. Snyder, Raymond Silvis, A. M. Whitford, Louis Gerardi and
H. F. Stoke.

MR. SLATE: I just learned when I arrived here that I was to be on this
discussion group, and I learned a few minutes ago that I was to lead it,
so I can assure you that this is wholly unrehearsed, and I may have to
flounder around a bit before we get things running smoothly.

I thought I might review the variety situation rather briefly. We have
done quite a lot of variety testing of filberts at Geneva; in fact,
about the only nut cultural work we have done at Geneva has been the
filbert project. We started out with about 25 or 30 varieties that we
secured from American nurseries, many of them from a firm in Rochester
which imported them from Germany. Later we added varieties from England,
France and Germany. I picked up nearly all the varieties that I could
locate until we had about 120 varieties growing there at Geneva. These
were there for some years, and it became evident that many of them were
not of great value. Then we had a hard winter in 1933 and 1934, and
although it did not kill the trees, most of them were blackhearted and
began going back soon after that. However, I felt at that time that I
knew enough about the varieties to discard most of them. Many of them
were discarded because they had poor nuts, many of them were
unproductive, and many of them lacked hardiness of catkins. I laid a
great deal of emphasis on the hardiness of catkins in testing the
varieties.

Out of that variety test were three varieties which we considered to be
most satisfactory of the lot. These were Cosford, an English variety,
rather a small nut but very thin-shelled. The catkins were hardy and one
of the heavier croppers of the lot. Medium Long, a nut which I believe
originated as a seedling in Rochester, was another one, and Italian Red,
which later proved to be Gustav's Zellernuss, a German variety, was
another.

As a result of that variety test it became evident that varieties from
Germany, many of which originated in the colder portions of Germany and
Northern Germany, were distinctly more hardy than the varieties that we
got from French sources and English sources. In some of the proceedings
of the Association published during the '30's I have reported on the
different varieties and their hardiness and those varieties that I
thought were most valuable. I don't recall the names of many of those
German varieties. These three varieti