Mr. Stoke: Mr. Chairman, if you will pardon me for saying one more word, here is a suggestion I will make. Now you can check for yourself. The whole thing hinges on whether we can get _permanent_ grafts on the tree and get the characteristics in the grafted tree that the parent has--in the good selected tree. Now you take the reports sent us by Mr. Hemming; you take the reports of the station at Albany--of individual trees in those plots. You take the worst trees and you will find they are nothing but boarders. You take the best and you will find they are very profitable. You take the average and it will fall somewhere in between. Now, why keep a lot of boarders that don't pay--free boarders--or why use run-of-mine seedlings, _if_ we can graft successfully--and some people like to dispute that--and produce nothing but the best? And you can check it on any of those tables. [Mr. Hardy's paper.] We have a few tables in our former Reports. You can check it and figure it out for yourself. Dr. Crane: To clear up this situation I wanted to ask Mr. Hardy a question, and then I wanted to make a statement. In this report from the 1938 and 1940 planting at Albany, Georgia, in the Brown tract in 1947 there were 188 trees that bore crops, but that planting consisted of 274 trees planted in 1938 and 60 trees planted in 1940. Why weren't those 274 trees plus those 60 trees represented in the 100 with the yield records of 1947? Mr. Hardy: Dr. Crane knows the answer, so I will let him ask the question and answer it, too. Dr. Crane: In 1936 we planted 1,000 trees of the same Peter Liu selections on the Station farm at Beltsville, Maryland. They were of the same number and letter designations as others that were distributed to cooperators. Out of the thousand trees that we planted on the Station farm some of them came into bearing at four and five years after planting. But the nuts were small in size and were not much good. With one or two exceptions, out of that planting there were none bearing satisfactorily to suit us after ten years. In 1945 we applied the ax, because a Chinese chestnut tree, from an orchard standpoint, if it's not in bearing in ten years after planting is not worth keeping. We haven't got time to wait. So out they came. And in addition to that we have had other trees that have done the same thing. Now, out of this 274 plus the 60 at Albany, Georgia, we have three trees that we now figure are good enough to be raised to a variety status, plus possibly two or three more. Now, you can figure your percentage of good trees when you plant seeds. Dr. Overholser: Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question, whether these three seedlings to which they propose to give variety status have been propagated in sufficient number that they are able to give distribution in other areas.