Mr. Pierce: There has been none reported.
Mr. Reed: I think that the varieties that these men in Indiana have originated are the most promising we know of. I think that in examining these specimens you will agree that they are of fairly high quality and good size, and if they prove to be resistant to the disease much may be expected from them.
Mr. Hutt: I have not seen the chestnut blight at all. I hope that it isn't in our section. I have heard it was brought in from some point but I do not know whether it was identified exactly as the chestnut blight.
Mr. Pierce: I saw a specimen sent from North Carolina and it proved to be the Collinsville fungus.
Mr. Corsan: If you remember reading Fuller's book on nuts, he reported that the chestnut blight extended through the Carolinas but said that chestnuts were still coming from that direction in great abundance. Up in Canada we haven't the chestnut blight. The chestnut tree runs from the Ohio River to the Niagara River but it doesn't cross into Michigan, except along the Michigan Southern and Lake Shore Railroad where some enterprising gentlemen have planted the chestnut with the tamarack alternately all the way from Cleveland to Chicago. I examined the state of Indiana across and from top to bottom several times in the summer and I never saw any chestnuts there, but I have seen some newly planted places in Michigan; near Battle Creek I saw a farm of about fifty acres. We are having up in Ontario, beyond Toronto, a blight that has attacked the Lombardy poplar and that looks similar to the chestnut blight. I have been watching it for the last ten years and the tree seems to have at last outlived it. It dies down and then a little sprout comes out from the carcass.
The Chairman: Isn't that the poplar tree borer that always attacks the Lombardy?
Mr. Corsan: Oh no, it's very similar to the chestnut tree blight. We can grow chestnut trees all we like but no one has brains enough to grow them. The farmers grow pigs and things but don't bother with chestnut trees; consequently the chestnut blight does not exist there.
Mr. Pierce: I didn't answer a portion of Mr. Littlepage's question. Mr. Littlepage asked whether or not the blight might be expected in the Middle West. That depends, more or less, upon the results of the work Pennsylvania is now carrying on. If we can keep the disease from extending through the territory in which we are working, there is a very good chance to keep it out of the West. If we are not successful, it may be expected to develop, in time, over the whole chestnut range.