DR. METCALF: I don't think that there are any methods of control which can profitably be applied to orchard trees under present commercial conditions. If a man has a few orchard trees which he regards as novelties and to which he is prepared to give very careful attention, I think the disease can be controlled. So far as I can see, the only hope of commercial control lies in none of the present varieties, but in Dr. Van Fleet's hybrids, possibly in the Chinese chestnut, and, aside from the objectionable qualities of the Japanese nut in certain strains of Japanese. With the rapid withdrawal of the wild chestnuts from the market, however, the price of chestnuts may rise, and control methods in orchards become practicable. MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. McCoy has been in Pennsylvania and has come back with the very optimistic idea that the chestnut blight was under control up there. I took him out on my farm in Maryland and showed him my trees, and that the only thing that could destroy the trees faster than the blight is a forest fire. DR. METCALF: Exactly. THE PRESIDENT: I believe, Dr. Metcalf, you conducted a series of spraying experiments recently, and I understand that others have done the same thing. Mr. P. A. Dupont, I believe, on his fine estate near Wilmington, tried to spray a few chestnut trees with Bordeaux mixture, and I understand he gave it up as a physical failure, to say nothing of the cost. Am I right about that? DR. METCALF: That is my understanding, that he was dealing with large trees and failed. A MEMBER: Well, did you succeed with small ones? DR. METCALF: In the line of spraying? That is a long story, and I suggest that Mr. Hunt answer that. MR. HUNT: In the spraying work conducted on Dr. Smith's place at Bluemont, Va., we had 2500 numbered trees under observation; about 1500 of them being sprayed. Equal numbers of trees were sprayed with Bordeaux and with lime-sulphur. The number of sprayings given different lots of trees varied, but even trees sprayed as often as every fifteen days blighted in a number of instances. While I did not get a greatly reduced percentage of blight (approximately 50 per cent) among the sprayed trees taken as a whole, the difference between individual plots seemed to depend rather on location in the orchard, as some blocks of unsprayed trees showed practically no blight and some blocks of sprayed trees showed considerable blight. I might say that the grafted trees did not blight nearly so heavily as the ungrafted trees. So far as any real success is concerned there was none. It would cost over one hundred dollars per acre per year to spray as often as some of the trees were sprayed, and it wouldn't control the blight. So I wouldn't consider it at all practicable. THE SECRETARY: What is the reason that the grafted trees blighted less than the ungrafted?