Just another point on the matter of home planting. I wouldn't be a very good preacher if I didn't carry out my own practices. Just to show my faith by my works I want to say that I took out every shade tree at home and put a nut tree in its place. Down south where shade is very valuable they said "that man is very foolish to cut down nice elms and maples like that and put nut trees in their place." It did look so then for a while. Now I have some handsome pecans and Persian walnuts and Japanese walnuts, and this year I get my first dividends from a tree five years old. Of course we have taken care to preserve their symmetry, but I think our nut trees come pretty close to being our best shade tree. I will challenge anybody to find a handsomer tree than a well-grown pecan. It is a very stalwart tree with its branches of waving foliage, which is the characteristic of an ideal shade tree, and yet, in addition to that, it produces in the fall magnificent nuts. So the proposition of home planting is one that pays quick dividends on attention given. I think I have convinced my neighbors that it is a good deal better to raise handsome nut trees than poplars. My neighbor planted Carolina poplars at the same time. He was out there the other morning raking up the leaves and that is all he will have to do until Christmas time. THE DISEASES OF NUT TREES. S. M. MCMURREN, WASHINGTON, D. C. MR. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS: It is a source of great regret with me that I cannot report to you some new and horrible disease attacking nut trees. This makes a more interesting talk.