Meeting called to order by the President, at 10 a. m.

THE PRESIDENT: I have the great pleasure of introducing to you Dr. Howe,
Assistant Director of the Botanical Gardens.

DR. HOWE: I shall only take a minute to say that we are delighted to have you here, and that if we can do anything to assist you, or to perpetuate your success, I hope you will please let us know. As the Spaniards say, "The house is yours."

I hope that your visit will be so pleasant that you may find it convenient to come here again.

THE SECRETARY: Mr. Jones will you tell us something about the handling of seeds for planting?

MR. JONES: I did not give the subject any thought before coming here but I might say that the nuts should be gathered promptly and dried, placing them in a shady spot, for they can be injured where the sun is too warm. We stratify them in sand. Then in the spring you can sift the sand through a sieve, take out the nuts and plant them.

In stratifying chestnuts we keep them between layers of wire mesh, for mice are very fond of these nuts. We cover the nuts with sand and leaves. Chinkapins we usually keep in cold storage.

THE SECRETARY: When you stratify these nuts where do you keep them?

MR. JONES: Right out in the open on top of the ground. A frame may be made with wire nailed on the bottom. This may be set out anywhere in the garden, but down a little into the dirt. Put in the nuts between layers of sand and leaves.

THE SECRETARY: Mr. Kelsey told me that the best way he had found to keep nuts was to bury them in a deep hole, perhaps two feet deep. Have you had experience with that way?

MR. JONES: The way I described is the usual way to keep seed and we get very fine results. We do that in order to keep the seed cool and so that they will not dry out. But we always have to watch out for mice. It might be a good idea, in stratifying chestnuts in the box with wire mesh on the bottom, to place the box at an angle that would drain off at least part of the water.

THE SECRETARY: Dr. Zimmerman, have you anything to say?

DR. ZIMMERMAN: I discovered by accident that black walnuts and hickories could be kept very nicely in the dry state until spring; then put water on them and they will sprout very nicely. But my chestnuts get moldy that way.

MR. BIXBY: We cover the nuts with at least a sprinkle of earth, may be four or five inches.

THE SECRETARY: Mr. Jones would keep them with practically no dirt but with sand and leaves.

MR. JONES: I would use a little sand over them, two parts of sand to one part of nuts. We put in six inches of nuts and alternating layers of sand.

DR. BROOKS: I know of a man who puts a layer of chestnuts and one of moss and says that in the spring the nuts are in splendid condition.

MR. BIXBY: I have had the nuts sprout very much better when they were stratified as soon as gathered.

MR. O'CONNOR: I bought about 5 bushels of black walnuts, paying 75 cents a bushel for them. I simply dumped them out on the ground, not bothering about the shucks at all, and covered them over with dirt. I paid no more attention to them until spring. Then I put the nuts in trenches with dirt about 5 inches over the top. The mice did not bother them, and I think they did well that way.

THE PRESIDENT: Did the frost affect them?

MR. O'CONNOR: No, not at all.

THE PRESIDENT: I have a black walnut tree at home that started to grow in a neighbor's cellar. It had grown a foot and a half and was rather white in color. I cut off the top and planted it out in the open. Today the tree is still growing and is all right.

We will now have an address by Prof. Neilson, of Canada.

PROF. NEILSON: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a real pleasure for me to get back to this convention once more. I tried to come last year but owing to certain difficulties I was not able to do so.

Before I give you my report on nut culture in Canada, I want to tell you some of my troubles. Two or three years ago, when I began to express my interest in nut culture, I thought it would be a good idea to get some nuts from China. I wrote to several missionaries in Northwestern China at about our latitude, and I finally secured five bushels of Persian walnuts and one bushel of Chinese chestnuts. The nuts were a long time on the road and very few were in fit condition to use when they arrived. I stored some of the Persian walnuts in our cellar at the Ontario College. The rest of the nuts I distributed to others.

The nuts at the college did not fare very well. When I left there I gave directions to the members of the Department to look after them carefully. This is how they did it. Someone broke into the cellar where the nuts were stratified in the sand, and ran off with about one bushel. The Chinese chestnuts arrived in about the same condition as the Chinese walnuts. Of these I managed to save about a peck. We divided the nuts into three equal lots. Some we kept at the Guelph Experiment Station, some at Vineland, and some in the Southwestern Station. Of those at Guelph, out of the whole lot, 35 nuts germinated, and of these the mice ate all but five. These five were taken outside and carefully placed in a flat; but someone came along and ran into the flat and smashed those five plants all to pieces.

In addition to this some of my friends tried to tell me that I was chasing wild geese; that nut trees would not ever be important commercially in Canada; that 99 per cent of the value of the nut tree was for shade anyhow (as if he meant shade for pigs and cows); and that they were not even ornamental.

Before I read my paper, however, I will say that the work I am now doing is somewhat different from that I had when I was last here, when I was Prof. of Horticulture. I am now doing extension work for the government.