Now in the organization of the Bureau of Plant Industry there are at least two main offices where nut problems would be studied; in the Division of Horticultural and Pomological Investigations and in my office, where the diseases are studied. Remember, also, that the insect pests are studied in the Bureau of Entomology; they have experimented quite extensively with pecan insect pests, and have the organization to handle such pests. Of course there is a Bureau of Markets and the Office of Soil Fertility in the Bureau of Plant Industry, which handle the pecan, incidental to the other studies. MR. BIXBY: I would like to ask Dr. Waite a question. The association has spent a good deal of time in developing exact methods of measuring quantitatively the various characteristics of nuts which are considered valuable, and that study has given us methods of comparing notes from year to year, comparing the same nut, and I have noticed that it is quite frequent that the kind of nut that is good one year, will not be so good the next year. To take an example, the Clark hickory, which took the prize one year, the next year fell so far down that it would not take any prize. But after a good deal of trouble I found that by careful examination I could pick out from the nuts a few which tested up as they did before. It occurred to me that a condition of that kind would be more likely to be due to difference in the soil than in the fertility of the pollen. Dr. Waite has had more or less experience in noting the effect of the pollen, and I would like to ask if he thought this the cause of the difference in the nuts. DR. WAITE: I think it might be the cause for a little difference, but we could account for the difference by entirely different things. By environment and other conditions. Take the apples grown in this vicinity; I have observed that certain seasons fit certain varieties. This year it was favorable for Ben Davis, and yet we have had a poor crop of most varieties; the conditions were bad for the Winesap to set, but yet the fruit is good. Every year and every day is different; and plants are subjected to these complications, and the yield, or the result in fruit, is a response to environment. They are so very susceptible to these things. I came here this morning after picking some cross pollenated pears on the Arlington Farm. We have a lot of crosses there where we study the hybrid seedlings. Some will be almost too poor, in certain years, to deserve further attention, and good another season. In other words, these nuts probably do not vary any more from year to year than many of our fruits and vegetables do, and the main factor is probably response to environment, namely, temperature, air humidity, soil moisture and sunshine. THE PRESIDENT: I might mention that we have had a filbert orchard at Rochester for eleven years, and there has not been the slightest indication of blight there yet.