the land. With that kind of scouting I believe we will be able to bring our costs of scouting down to an insignificant figure and yet give us a scouting adequate for the purpose of delaying the spread of the disease.

Mr. ANDERSON. Of course, so far as I am concerned, and I presume the committee in general and Congress, we do not want to throw any money at the birds and we do not want to take up a proposition which is hopeless, to begin with; but if there is a reasonable ground to believe with the expenditure of a reasonable amount we can keep this stuff out of the commercial forests and national forests, it seems to me it is very poor economy to save the money. That is my point of view about it at the moment; but I would want to feel there was at least a probability of retarding it which would justify the expending of this money, not only this year but continuously until we are certain we can not stop it.

Doctor KELLERMAN. Mr. Chairman, to leave this work upon a very much reduced scale in the opinion of everyone who has been in the northwestern area is to guarantee the rapid infection of the American timber. And I, think it is equally true that a comparatively small sum will effect a delay of the disease for many years. Opinions differ as to whether that delay can be made indefinite.

Mr. ANDERSON. I take it, if the infection gets into the commercial white-pine areas there is no hope of doing anything whatever with it? Doctor KELLERMAN. None whatever.

Mr. ANDERSON. And if that happened, it would be known very soon?

Doctor KELLERMAN. Not very soon. That is one of the points that should be brought out a little more clearly. The disease is capable of infecting pines, but the rate of development of the disease will depend to a great extent on the rate the pine is growing and whether the weather conditions are particularly favorable for the fungus. It is possible for the pine to be infected and not show any very obvious symptoms for five or more years; but when weather conditions do become favorable for the disease to develop rapidly, then the destructive effect is shown in any area that may be infected.

For the next 10 or 15 years, there might not be much difference as far as many commercial men would see in the timber conditions: but when the pine was generally diseased, there would be no chance then of doing anything at all. The pine stand then would be in about the same situation that the chestnut is in the area to the north of us. The chestnut is gone.

Mr. ANDERSON. In addition to the infection you can see, you would have the potential infection all over the place?

Doctor KELLERMAN. Yes

Mr. BUCHANAN. How long has this disease been in the Canadian white pine forests?

Doctor KELLERMAN. For somewhere between 10 and 15 years. I am talking of the Northwest.

Mr. BUCHANAN. I am, too. To what extent is that white pine territory injured now, probably?

Doctor KELLERMAN. The areas where the disease happens to be most injurious are non-commercial; that is, the pine is not the most important timber, though it is badly injured.

Mr. BUCHANAN, I know it is injured, but is it destroyed, or not? Doctor KELLERMAN. It is practically destroyed in those areas. Mr. BUCHANAN. Then, from the time the disease gets generally spread in the white pine in the Northwest of this country, the whole industry will be threatened?

Doctor KELLERMAN. It will be.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Judging by the history of Canada.

Doctor KELLERMAN. I rather think that the conditions of Canada were a little bit more favorable than we are likely to have in Idaho, although that is nothing but guess work.

Mr. LEE. At the proper time, in the proper item, I would like to inquire about the pine beetle we have in the South.

Doctor TAYLOR. That would come under entomology.

MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1924.

FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF DISEASES OF COTTON, POTATOES, TRUCK CROPS,

ETC.

Mr. ANDERSON. The next item is on page 87, for the investigation of diseases of cotton, potatoes, truck crops, forage crops, drug and related plants.

Doctor TAYLOR. This, Mr. Chairman, is the paragraph under which the investigation of diseases of cotton, potatoes, truck crops, forage crops, drug and related plants is done. The amount carried shows an apparent decrease of $2,260 from the current appropri

ation.

When we take into account the reclassification act change and the bonus change the actual decrease is $6,700 in the item.

The principal features of the work under way at present are those relating to diseases of the potato, sweet potato, tomato, lettuce, and celery, cabbage, and onion diseases, diseases of cucumbers and melons, beans and plant diseases affecting these products while in transit to market.

Under this appropriation there is maintained an advisory service to the inspection service of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics through which the disease features of the damage to vegetables in transit is determined.

Mr. ANDERSON. Is your general storage work done under this item?

Doctor TAYLOR. No, sir. This is a special phase of technical advice to the inspection service of the Bureau of Agriculture Economics, which in the leading markets inspects the produce and issues certificates.

Mr. ANDERSON. Does this have anything to do with the establishing of standards for potatoes, cabbage, etc.?

Doctor TAYLOR. Not directly. It has to do with the improvement of potato seed stock through the production of potatoes under the plans of field inspection, which in various of the States are being developed toward the production of a seed potato supply which is pure and productive and free of seed transmitted diseases.

SEED PLOT METHOD OF PRODUCTION OF POTATOES. ·

Mr. ANDERSON. To what extent is the seed plot method of production of seed potatoes being adopted?

Doctor TAYLOR. Variously in different sections. In certain of the Northern States as Maine and Michigan, New York, Vermont, Minnesota, and to some extent in the Pacific Northwest, a systematic production of seed that can be certified as of a definite quality, purity, and freedom from disease, is being accomplished. So that there is now in some of the States quite an extensive merchandising to other States, particularly to the southern territory, that depends on northern grown seed potatoes for its corp, which is the early potato crop. Mr. ANDERSON. I do not have reference to commercial seed plots but to individual seed-plot methods.

Doctor TAYLOR. I did not just get the point. That varies very much by States, depending a good deal upon the interest that particular county agents have taken in it in sections where the department and the State agricultural colleges are stimulating interest and helping them to get started in that way, so that the individual farmer may himself produce in a seed plot a more productive strain. Mr. ANDERSON. Does the department generally recommend the seed plot?

Doctor TAYLOR. Where practicable, yes. Of course, there is good deal of the commercial potato-growing territory which does not seem well suited to the maintenance of highly productive strains. There are certain diseases that come in, certain climatic influences that are difficult to combat. So there is a considerable portion of the potato-producing area which, it would seem, is likely to be continuously dependent upon seed introduced every two or three years, very much as it is in portions of Europe.

Mr. ANDERSON. Are seed potatoes generally immature potatoes? Doctor TAYLOR. No, sir.

Mr. ANDERSON. They are mature potatoes?

Doctor TAYLOR. Except in the more southern territory, like this region about here, where a planting is made late in June or the 1st of July which is timed to mature or barely to mature before the killing frosts arrive in the fall.

Mr. ANDERSON. As a general rule the immature potato is truer in variety?

Doctor TAYLOR. It keeps better. It matures just as the cold weather comes on, so that it is not subjected to the heat of the late summer and autumn, as the spring-planted crop is. That is the principal advantage.

In the more northern territory, frequently the shortness of the season brings about an immaturity through the killing of the vines by frost.

Mr. ANDERSON. To what extent does the development of seed potatoes reduce the number of eyes so that you have a master stem, a master bud?

Doctor TAYLOR. Not materially, I would say, with most of the varieties, Mr. Anderson. The varieties differ very greatly as to the number of eyes and the location of the eyes, whether scattered all over the tuber or concentrated about the seed end, so called.

The ability to produce a shallow-eyed and uniform-sized tuber is an important feature.

Mr. ANDERSON. That, it seems to me, is directly predicated upon the development of seed plots.

Doctor TAYLOR. The seed-plot method is the basic method. The only question is as to what is the most practical way of applying it, whether each potato grower shall undertake to improve his own seed. In some sections that is practical and is being developed considerably. In other sections the reliance apparently must be on shipped-in seed to such an extent that the potato grower becomes almost as dependent on purchased seed as the cabbage grower. Mr. ANDERSON. I do not know very much about potatoes. I have a small interest in a very large farm in Colorado where potatoes are on part of the location and they use the seed-plot method altogether. We have a very uniform potato.

Doctor TAYLOR. Are they under irrigation?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes; it has only one eye in the end and has only one master bud. It produces very well, four or five hundred bushels to the acre.

Doctor TAYLOR. There are some problems in irrigated potato growing that are quite different in their emphasis than those of the general potato country. I think it is true that whereas a few years ago it was considered impossible to grow satisfactory seed potatoes under irrigation in Colorado, at the field station at Greeley, where this office and our horticultural office are both at work on this problem of maintaining the productiveness and quality, they are succeeding in maintaining the quality of the seed stock, working right there under irrigation conditions entirely. That has been one of the questions to determine, Can the irrigated potato growers grow their own seed?

Mr. ANDERSON. I know some of them are doing it. I did not suppose there was any question about it.

Doctor TAYLOR. There has been a very serious doubt in the minds of many of the growers in the Greeley district, which is perhaps the oldest irrigated potato district, apparently due to carelessness in selection and lack of attention to the perpetuation of clean, trueto-type plants.

Mr. ANDERSON. Of course, no seed plot method is going to succeed without careful selection and the exercise of a high degree of care all along the line; it does not make any difference whether it is in irrigation sections or elsewhere.

Doctor TAYLOR. Then, certain of the abnormalties of form and size and quality which were formerly regarded as "running out features of the potato are now known to be due to certain specific diseases which can be eliminated from the seed stock by the very careful inspection and roguing of the seed plots.

Mr. ANDERSON. Of all the truck crops that I know anything about, the potato is the poorest in quality and the least uniform. It is a disgrace to the country. You can not get two batches of potatoes alike. A whole lot of these eastern folks have got in the habit of planting a great big potato whose texture is as poor as it can possibly be. Its only qualification seems to be that it is large and yields well. I think the consequence eventually will be that there won't be any market for potatoes.

Doctor TAYLOR. There is a great variability of type and size and quality. That is one of the very difficult things when anything like a systematic and orderly marketing operation is undertaken.

The potato wart disease, which at one time was looked on with keen apprehension by the pathologists is substantially under control. It has not been completely eradicated from the gardens in the mining districts in Pennsylvania and western Maryland and West Virginia, where it was established, but is being overcome by planting varieties that yield well under our American conditions and are resistant to it.

Varieties well adapted to our production conditions have been found so nearly immune to the disease that they are being grown successfully. Restriction of movement of potatoes out of the infected premises is still maintained in the small district where the wart was established. But the disease has ceased to be a cause for alarm as it was at one time.

FOR INVESTIGATING THE PHYSIOLOGY OF CROP PLANTS.

Mr. ANDERSON. If there are no further questions on this item, we will take up the item for investigating the physiology of crop plants and for testing and breeding varieties thereof.

Doctor TAYLOR. This item shows an apparent increase of $1,260, which is due to the changes under the reclassification and the bonus. The amount actually provided is the same as for this current fiscal year.

The work under this appropriation is to a considerable extent the breeding of hardier and better adapted types of citrus fruits and the introduction and establishment of date culture in our Southwest.

DATE CULTURE WORK.

Very gratifying progress with the date project has been made during this past year.

Of the varieties recently introduced from Egypt in considerable numbers of offshoots, the Saidy, of which only a few trees had fruited prior to this season in America, is showing excellent productiveness, size and quality and is apparently well adapted to the conditions of the Great Imperial Valley of California, where a suitable variety for commercial planting has heretofore been lacking.

The conditions there include periods of extrenie dampness and fog which prevent the Deglet Noor, the variety that is so well suited in the Coachella Valley from maturing. But the Saidy shows every indication of fitting that condition well. The Imperial Valley is the largest single irrigated valley in the Southwest and probably the largest potential date-producing district that we have.

Mr. ANDERSON. How many trees are there in the country of the Saidy variety?

Doctor TAYLOR. Probably in the neighborhood of 2,000.
Mr. ANDERSON. How many of the Deglet Noor?

Doctor TAYLOR. There are now a great many. I have not the figures here.

Mr. ANDERSON. How long does it take from the time the shoot is planted until it comes into bearing?