PRESIDENT BEST: Thank you very much, Mr. Devitt, for this very intriguing story. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. And we want to keep in touch with you, and we want to keep hearing from you, because you have got a big job to do yet. MR. DEVITT: There is only one thing, ladies and gentlemen: I don't want to run into 5,000 letters to answer. Keep my name out of this. That is my walking-out request now. That's the story. I am going to continue to keep collecting samples. I hope some day to have a number myself of the best, and I might come back again sometime. I can't say every year; circumstances may be that I can't come. However, it's been a great pleasure for me to be here. I have wanted to come for 20 years, and I thought this year that I should come, because I am on this special mission of Reverend Crath's. Now you know what's going on in Ontario. MR. SLATE: Mr. Chairman, I think the Association will answer the 5,000 letters, if he will ask. MR. DEVITT: I didn't ask. Are there any questions? DR. MCKAY: I'd like to ask a question. Was any scion wood ever brought over? MR. DEVITT: There was some scion wood brought over by the Reverend Crath in the spring of 1935, and it was brought over on the boat. I remember in those years only one that grew on a tree belonging to Mr. Corsan. I don't think the other scion wood proved any good at all. MR. STOKE: I got a little of that scion wood, and it had been waxed. The bark was nice and green, but the buds were dead. MR. CALDWELL: Do you have a plantation of young, producing trees? MR. DEVITT: No. My place, where I had those trees is now $3 million worth of buildings on 15 acres. You'd be looking down a street. They moved in in 1944, and built up 15 acres where I had one acre in the 15. The Eastern Black Walnut as a Farm Timber Tree JOHN DAVIDSON, _Xenia, Ohio_ Most people instinctively love trees. Perhaps this is an inherited result of arboreal ancestry. Even so, very few of us realize what an astonishingly close tie exists between the survival of trees and the well-being of the human race. Probably even fewer realize the very great importance, in the economy of animal life, of trees which bear nuts. Not alone for the sake of their nuts are they important, valuable as nuts are, but also for the sake of the unmatched timber which some of them produce, as well as for the sake of their service as soil conservers and builders, as beautifiers, and as silent, persistent builders of capital values. In view of these outstanding qualities, it is strange that nut trees are today unfortunately and shamefully neglected in the north. Especially, I claim, is this true of the Eastern Black walnut. Here is a mystery. Why do not northern planters of trees plant more Eastern Black walnuts for their exceedingly valuable timber?