MR. REED: In 1910 certain Americans in China conceived the idea of exporting the walnuts produced in that country to America. The experiment proved so successful that they continued to do so, and shipped their walnuts to this country year after year. The business built up very rapidly, until the war broke out when, for the time being, the industry was forced to a standstill. But as soon as the war was over the business picked up again, and had assumed such proportions, about two years ago, that American growers wanted to know how much longer the Chinese would be able to send walnuts over here. Most of the nuts from China were of inferior quality to those produced in this country. Records of the exports showed that there had been an increase from China each year; but as to the methods used, the extent of orcharding, or the growth in planting, etc., the matter had not been written up, and the consuls had not the remotest idea. It was finally decided by Congress, therefore, that a special appropriation for an investigation should be made. So a special trip was made to China to ascertain, first of all, the probable trade from there for the next ten or twenty years. Our people felt that more walnuts would be coming here, and they wanted to know about this before they planted any more here. It fell to my lot to make the trip, a year ago this summer. We went first to Honolulu; then to Manila and Japan, and finally to China. We went into the section just to the right of Tientsin. By superimposing a map of China over that of the United States you may see that China more than covers this country; China is considerably larger than the United States. Our basic point was Peking, which is in about the same latitude as Philadelphia. We found that walnuts were grown all through this section of China, not very much farther north than Peking, but not much farther south than Shanghai. There are walnuts cultivated here, in the Chinese way, over a great area; but we were convinced that the exportation of walnuts to this country was not likely to increase, for the business has apparently reached its height. American trade takes the best nuts; the second best go to Canada, the third to Europe and the fourth and fifth to Australia. Our first expedition into the country was almost directly north of Peking. We went down the railroad about 15 miles, to Shaho, where we employed donkeys and a ricksha, and rode across country some 12 or 15 miles. Here we found a very excellent Chinese hotel, and surrounding orchards of perhaps 300 trees. Some of the consular reports in China stated that this place was one of the three sections in which the finest shipments of nuts were produced.