MR. C. A. REED: Some of the nuts from that tree were on exhibition where you were this morning.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you have, practically, a dwarfing, with the dwarfing manifesting itself in the fruit rather than in the wood.
MR. C. A. REED: It did in that one instance, but, on the other hand, we have seen pecans grown on top-worked hickories that you could hardly tell from typical specimens of pecans grown on pecan stocks.
THE PRESIDENT: Isn't the bitternut several times as rapid in growth as the shagbark, or some others? That is, probably, one of the best stocks for the hickories if one wishes to experiment.
MR. C. A. REED: AS Colonel Van Duzee said last night, "there are a lot of things we don't know." This is one of them. I might quote a number of men who are right here in this audience to convince you that we don't any of us know much about nut culture today. I will quote Dr. Morris and Mr. Littlepage. We were talking about hickory nut varieties in Dr. Morris' office one night about the first of this year, when Mr. Littlepage made the remark that "the man who didn't change his mind every three years on nut culture didn't keep up with the game," and Dr. Morris replied that he had changed his mind so much in the last five years he had no respect for any man who believed what he said. Now, when you can't believe Dr. Morris, Colonel Van Duzee, or Dr. Smith, what are you going to do with the rest of us?
COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Reed, I didn't say what you said I did. I said: "There are so many things you already know that are not true." (Laughter.)
MR. C. A. REED: Well, now, I will quote another man, Dr. Curtis, one of the best known pecan men in the South. It was Dr. Curtis that I went to for my initial experience in pecans. The first I ever saw were in his orchard in Florida, and I asked him quite a good many questions, and he would tell me a story and go away. And I called him up one day, went into his orchard in harvest time when he was gathering the nuts in the hulls and taking them to the packing house. And I said "What is that for?" And he said "Don't you see those shuck worms all through the hulls here? I am throwing them out there to let the chickens get them." "Well," said I, "can you say you are getting rid of the shuck worms by doing that?" And he replied, "I can see, one year with another, that they are gradually getting less." A year later I went down there before he did. He was in Maine at the time, but his orchard trees were just alive with shuck worms, every variety almost eaten up with them. I said to him, when he came back, "I thought you were going to get rid of those shuck worms by feeding them to the chickens?" "Well, there it goes," he said, "you get a nice theory all worked out and some one comes along and asks you a simple little question that knocks it all in the head." And that is almost the unanimous experience. What you know you have got to qualify if you talk at all. I am getting to be such a pessimist I am not much good in the government any more. (Laughter.)