The disease is spreading in Italy at a rapid rate. "By 1942 one half of the 190,000 acres of chestnut in the province of Genoa had been infected and spot infections had been discovered in the adjoining coastal province of La Spezia, also in the region of Liguria." I am devoting some space to this situation because it means so much to the Italian people. In Italy fifteen percent of the forest is composed of chestnut. Not only does the country use the nuts as a source of food and income, approximately sixty million pounds being exported annually in former years, but the young coppice shoots are used for the weaving of baskets, older ones for poles for vineyards, still older for staves of wine casks, and the oldest for telephone and telegraph poles. "Before the war, chestnut flour was the principal food in many localities, but during the war a serious food shortage forced the people in many other areas to rely solely upon chestnut flour for weeks at a time." Professor Aldo Pavari, Director of the _Stazione Sperimentale di Selvicoltura_ at Florence, visited this country in the summer and fall of 1946, under the sponsorship of the UNRRA, and spent four days with me at our plantations, learning our methods and getting acquainted with the blight resistant hybrids we have been developing by the breeding together of oriental and native chestnuts. Prof. Pavari visited also the plantation of the Division of Forest Pathology at Beltsville and elsewhere, and other plantations in the west. In December we shipped to Florence, Italy, nuts of our best hybrids, and in March, scions for grafting--also this summer (1947) pollen of some of our best trees. On October 15 of this year (1947) we sent another shipment of nuts. Thus we may be able to give Italy the advantage of the progress we have made to date.