A great many organizations have been formed in the District of Columbia under that provision of the code. It seems to me about as simple and as comprehensive as any of the laws of any of the states, and about as free from any burdens or obligations of reports or matters of that kind. If it is the sense of this meeting, and I think you have quite a representative membership here, that this organization be so incorporated I shall take pleasure, after this meeting, in drafting proper papers, presenting them to some of the members for signature and perfecting a corporation.
THE PRESIDENT: That seems to be an excellent suggestion.
DR. MORRIS: I move that this recommendation be adopted.
AFTERNOON EXCURSION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS' ASSOCIATION
The members of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, in convention at Washington, D. C., October 7, 1920, made an excursion which included visits to the thirty-acre bearing northern pecan plantation of T. P. Littlepage; Dr. Walter Van Fleet's Government Station for the production of blight-resisting chestnuts and chickapins and other new hybrids, at Bell Experiment Plot, Glendale, Maryland; and the old Jefferson pecan trees at Marietta. The following notes were taken at points along the route:
DR. VAN FLEET: These are hybrids between the chinkapin and the Japan chestnut showing the blight even after thirteen years immunity. We do not do anything to check the disease at all.
There is a Japan variety said not to take it but you see how it affects it. It girdles it and the new wood builds it up. The tree is doomed. It is gone now but it has made a tremendous attempt to recovery. You see the new growth that has tried to come out there trying to bridge it and make it up. Of course even that is hopeful. In view of that we feel justified in breeding. The Chinese resist it much better. They take it more readily but they resist it far better. The efforts at self-bridging are quite successful.
This is one of the hybrids we have at Arlington. The parent tree got along for thirteen years without a sign of blight. By artificial inoculation we have given it the disease but it does not get it in the trunk. This is a Chinese chestnut seven years old and has had three crops. We took the most virulent virus and made a few inoculations and with absolutely no care the wound is closing up. The tree is apparently quite healthy. This is the Chinese Molissima, not of real good quality. These are only seven years old and have already borne three very good crops. The nuts are somewhat larger than the wild native and ripen about six weeks earlier.