Treasurer's Report

Year Ending August 31, 1934

RECEIPTS

Annual Memberships$266.75

Contributing Memberships10.00

Sale of Reports29.00

Sale of Bulletins2.25

For Subscriptions to National Nut News8.00

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Total$316.00$316.00

DISBURSEMENTS

Reprints, K. W. Greene (for Mr. Bixby)$ 21.10

Printing 1931 Report, Balance, American Fruits Pub. Co.50.00

Subscriptions, National Nut News18.00

Printing 1932 Report, Lightner Pub. Corp.200.00

Expenses Downingtown Convention, J. W. Hershey13.82

Membership Dues, American Horticultural Society2.00

Expense Handling Surplus Reports, C. A. Reed9.69

Advertising, Lightner Pub. Corp.4.00

Printing 1933 Report, Lightner Pub. Corp.125.32

Release Expense of Account with Litchfield Savings Society1.68

Loss on Check2.00

Postage, F. H. Frey12.10

Postage and Miscl. Expense for 1933 Report, F. H. Frey19.92

Mimeographing, G. L. Slate2.25

Printing, Postage and Supplies, C. F. Walker12.45

Check Charges & Taxes.68

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Total$495.01$495.01

Excess of Disbursements over Receipts $179.01

CASH ACCOUNT

Cash on hand or in bank as reported as of Aug. 31, 1933$306.01

Account in Litchfield Savings Society as of Aug. 31, 193315.94

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Total cash on hand or in bank as of Aug. 31, 1933$321.95$321.95

Excess of Disbursements over Receipts179.01

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Balance, Cash in bank, August 31, 1934 $142.94

Accounts, Due or Payable None

Press and Publication Committee

Dr. Deming:

We have had one or two articles in each issue of the National Horticultural Magazine, published by the American Horticultural Society in Washington. The editor has promised to have in each issue of his magazine something relating to nuts. He is particularly anxious to get short articles with a single illustration, articles about a page long which will attract attention, be easy to read and stimulate interest in nuts. I would be glad to receive articles of that nature for submission to the editor.

It is unfortunate that we no longer have an official journal, the National Nut News having gone out of existence. We have an opportunity to make the American Fruit Grower, with which we have been acquainted a good many years, our official journal, and that will come up in the course of this meeting.

Membership Committee

Mr. Walker:

From our increase in membership—forty new members—and from their addresses, one is able to judge of the work of Prof. Neilson, he being very active in obtaining new members. There are others of our members who also have been active and to whom credit is due for the increase in membership.

An analysis of the membership of the past six years indicates that we are on the increase again. We have retained over 90% of those who were members last year. I feel as though we need not try to get everybody in the world to plant nut trees. But there is no reason why we should not greatly increase our membership.

Program Committee

Prof. Neilson:

At nine o'clock tomorrow morning busses will be at the hotel to take us to the Kellogg plant. About 10:30 we will proceed to the sanitarium. We will try and meet at the Kellogg Hotel at 12:00 P.M. where we are to be the guest of Mr. W. K. Kellogg for luncheon. After lunch, at one o'clock, we will board the busses and proceed to the Kellogg farm. At the farm we will look over the buildings for a few minutes, call at the Kellogg School, and then stop for a few moments and look over our bittersweet plantation. Then we will go on to the Kellogg Bird Sanctuary and see what is being done there in conserving wild fowl.

After we leave the sanctuary we will visit a block of about fifteen acres of hickory trees, where I have been doing top working experiments for the last three or four years. Then we will inspect our variety plantation of nut trees and proceed to Mr. Kellogg's estate. At 5:30 the Kellogg Company will provide motor boats to take us for a cruise on Gull Lake. At 6:30 we will have our dinner at Bunbury Inn on Gull Lake and then have a few addresses and a business session.

Report of Committee on Hybrids and Promising Seedlings

Dr. Zimmerman:

One or two interesting seedlings have come to our attention during the past year. One a hickory nut that was drawn to the attention of the Pennsylvania Nut Growers' Association January last. It is a rather good nut and bears very well. I think Mr. Hershey has some of the trees for sale.

The other, a very interesting shellbark, came to my attention. The nut is large, the best cracker for a shellbark that I have seen, the tree itself is beautiful and, although the party who owns it says it bears every other year, it seems to me to produce a good many nuts every year that I have seen it.

Another, probably worthless, but interesting, seems to me to be an English walnut x butternut hybrid. The party insists she planted walnuts from a typical English walnut tree, but the trees from these nuts, of which there are a number bearing small nuts, certainly have the earmarks of the butternut. These plants will be kept under observation and a later report given concerning them.

We have a number of first generation hybrids, but so far as I am aware we have no second or following generation hybrids in the nut line. It seems to me that if we plant a lot of the nuts from these first generation hybrids and, when the plants are large enough, distribute them to parties who will give them space and care for them until they come into bearing, somebody sooner or later will get hold of some valuable material. Work along this line I expect to advance through our committee as rapidly as practical. It seems to me that the seedlings of our first generation hybrids should not be destroyed as has frequently been done in the past.

Prof. Neilson:

I have seen quite a few hybrids between the heartnut and the butternut. I believe the Mitchel is about the best.

Dr. MacDaniels:

We found that the tree had stood the winter very well and that it was bearing a good crop. We brought along a few samples labeled the Mitchel hybrid heartnut. It looked to me to be a promising nut.

Prof. Neilson:

Mr. Mitchel thought it was a worthless butternut. I told Mr. Mitchel that I thought it was well worth saving and I hope that one of these days we shall succeed in propagating it.

The President:

Mr. Stokes, in Virginia, has located some black walnuts that will be excellent. Mr. Hershey's name and work have been mentioned. He writes me that the territory of the Tennessee Valley is a wonderful lay-out and he is putting on a contest for different kinds of nuts. He may have some desirable nuts to present later on.

Mr. Slate:

If Mr. Reed is not planning to discuss those Jones hybrids in his paper I wish he, or someone else who is acquainted with them, would make some remarks to be placed on record.

Mr. Reed:

We think that the two most promising of the Jones hybrids are numbers 92 and 200. Those were Mr. Jones' own numbers. About three years ago we began making an intensive study of them. Ninety-two seemed to bear better and be a little more promising than 200, and so it was named first. It was named Buchanan in honor of the only president of the United States who came from Pennsylvania. Last year number 200 showed up so favorably that it seemed well to name that one also, so just about a year ago the name of Bixby was suggested and it met with universal approval. That, I think, is all that I have to say about the hybrids. We are watching them very closely.

From here east we had a very severe winter last year. Apple orchards very, very old were killed all through the east and with them thousands and thousands of English walnut trees. In Washington we have practically no crop of filberts and our English walnuts were affected generally.

We have yet to find a single hybrid between black walnut and English walnut which appears to be promising. There is a record, but I think we should have brought to our attention from time to time what was known as the James River hybrid. It was an enormous black walnut tree that grew on the James River near Jamestown. It was visited in 1928 by Mr. Karl Greene and Mr. Hershey. Mr. Greene said that the tree measured thirteen feet in circumference. You don't often see trees as large as that in any part of the country. That is in a part of the country where the English walnut has not done well. The tree must have been somewhere around 200 years old when it died. It was probably grown from a hybrid between an English walnut and a black walnut. Our American colonists brought the English walnut with them about the same time they brought our first apples and peaches and plums and everything else. This tree throws some light on the question as to when the first English walnut first came to this country.

A week ago yesterday I was riding along a country road down in Maryland. I saw a row of trees. One tree in the middle of that row was as big as any other three there. I slowed up and looked at them more closely. The large tree was a hybrid and the others were not.

Committee on Exhibits:

On the tables Prof. Neilson has a number of plates of the northern pecan at its best. Besides that he has two remarkable specimens of hybrid hickories. One is a McCallister, and the other is of unknown origin. There are also on the tables other remarkable nuts grown in this part of the United States, in Ontario and in British Columbia. There are chestnuts, English walnuts, Japanese heartnuts and others.

Mr. Reed:

You will recall that one year ago I was made custodian of the back records of the association. Within two weeks of the time of last year's meeting I personally procured the reports which were stacked away in Mr. Bixby's barn, and took them to Washington. A little later Dr. Deming and the late Mr. Russell made a trip to Redding, Connecticut, and sent me 500 pounds of back reports. Still later Mr. Karl Greene brought to me about another 500 pounds of reports. I had then about 1900 pounds. We put them in the basement of the building where our office was and then we began to move around. It began to cost something to move them.

I communicated with Mr. Slate and found that there was abundant space at Geneva, and the authorities were willing that they should be housed there. So I had the reports tied up and arranged with a truck man to move them to Geneva. I made the arrangements with a man who agreed to move them for $25. Then he backed out. I didn't feel like incurring a greater expense by sending them by railroad, so I waited until last week and took a bundle from each year in my own car. They are in the secretary's care at Geneva at the present time. The rest of the reports will presently be stored in Mr. Littlepage's packing shed out in his apple orchard. There are still a few reports in the Bixby's barn and Dr. Deming can tell how many more he has.

The President:

Each current report will be sold at $1.00 per copy and old reports at 50c a copy. If someone wanted an entire set we would sell all eighteen or nineteen numbers now for $6.00.

The American Fruit Grower, published in Cleveland, Ohio, has agreed to have the magazine appear as the official journal of the Northern Nut Growers' Association.

Mr. J. T. Bregger:

We will deem it a privilege, and I'm sure an obligation, to take on this responsibility of acting as official journal of your society and give to you at least a column each month. We are already acting as official organ of other horticultural societies and it seems to work out very well. In addition to the column that your secretary would have each month you could run further articles on nut growing, which would be of additional interest to your members. You would have some 150,000 of our readers who are interested in fruit growing, and who would be interested in nut growing, as possible new members for your organization. They would receive your announcements and articles each month and you could get in touch with them, through that column, for additional membership.

Mr. Walker:

I move that the American Fruit Grower be made the official organ of the Northern Nut Growers' Association, that the secretary be the official correspondent with the American Fruit Grower, that the subscription price be paid by the treasurer direct to the American Fruit Grower, that the present membership fee remain the same, two dollars, to all members, with the privilege of receiving the American Fruit Grower. The motion was seconded by Prof. Neilson.

The President:

Mr. Ellis has offered to donate $10.00 this year, if it is necessary, to apply on subscriptions for the membership. I don't know that we will have to call on him for this but it is certainly a display of fine spirit.

Dr. Deming:

I want to express my great satisfaction that the American Fruit Grower has offered to act as our official organ on such advantageous terms. Fourteen years ago, before Mr. Bregger's career as an editor began, I edited a nut column in the Fruit Grower. The motion was carried.

The following named were elected as committee to nominate officers for next year: Dr. Deming, Colonel Mitchell, Professor Neilson, Mr. Weber, and Dr. Colby.

Resolutions Committee: Professor Slate, Mr. C. A. Reed, and Dr. Colby.

Motion was duly made, seconded and carried that; honorary membership in this association may be conferred upon any person by a majority vote of members present at any business session or by letter ballot of members in good standing and honorary membership should be conferred only on individuals who have rendered outstanding or meritorious service in connection with the promotion of interest in nut bearing plants, their products and their culture.

Mr. W. K. Kellogg and Dr. John H. Kellogg were nominated for honorary members of the Association and unanimously elected.