es which we consider the best of
the lot were turned over to the New York Fruit Testing Association to
propagate and distribute, because they were not available from American
nurseries. I am not sure how many of them were available from other
sources, but they are still available from the Fruit Testing
Association.

Then out of that variety test a grading project developed. We got our
start from about 500 seedlings that Clarence Reed sent us in the early
'30's. We made crosses there at Geneva, using the Rush variety of
_Corylus americana_ as the seed parent in many cases. We also made some
crosses between _Corylus avellana_ varieties, and with these seedlings
from Mr. Reed and seedlings of our own crossing, we have grown about
2,000 filbert seedlings there at Geneva. These have all been evaluated
and discarded, except possibly 30 or 35 selections still on hand, some
of them being propagated for a second test planting. Stock of one or two
has been turned over to the Fruit Testing Association for increase and
eventual naming and introduction.

The work of the United States Department of Agriculture was along
similar lines. Mr. Reed did not send us all of his seedlings. A number
of them were fruited at Beltsville, and from that work at Beltsville I
believe two varieties have been named, Reed and Potomac. I am not sure
whether they are available yet from commercial sources.

MR. MCDANIEL: Two of them are.

MR. SLATE: Mr. Graham of Ithaca, a long-time member of this Association
and very much interested in filberts, had also made some crosses and
raised several hundred seedlings. He used the Winkler variety as a seed
parent. I believe he raised some seedlings of the Jones hybrids, which
would make that material second generation stock from the original cross
between Rush and the _avellana_ varieties.

Mr. Graham's planting was in rather a cold area; he had considerable
winter killing. Eventually filbert blight got into his planting, and it
really cleaned house. There were a very few seedlings in his planting
which remained free of filbert blight. I think it is a fairly safe guess
to say that they were probably very resistant to blight. So far these
have not been propagated to any extent.

There are a few cultural problems. The ones that we have encountered at
Geneva have been winter injury, particularly of the catkins, and also
some of them have not been as hardy in wood as we would like. We have
had no trouble with fi