The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-08-19
Trying to Fight
 Chestnut Disease
Dr. Louis A. Clinton Lays Blame
 on Extreme Weather.
Hartford Courant.)


 Down with the chestnut disease!"
 was the battle cry of a group of ! woodsmen yesterday, and four of them tramped all over Keney Park to see what could be done about it. Superin- tendent of Parks George A. Parker, Superintendent of Streets Charles J..
 Bennett, City Forester William A. Muirhead, and George H. Hollister, foreman of Keney Park, were the Hartford members of the party and they had as their guests Dr. Louis A. Clinton. director of the Storrs Agri- cultural Experiment Station,- and Dr. w. E. Britton of New Haven, State entomologist.
 Dr. Clinton and Dr. Britton are spe cialists of a high order, Dr. Clinton being we'll versed in the nature of fungus growth, and Dr. Britton being an authority on insect life. It was for the purpose of hearing what these two men had to say about the chest nut disease and other matters of pres ent concern in the city's parks that the meeting was arranged.
 Since the chestnut disease has be- come prevalent, Keney Park alone has lost proba bly, 100 chestnut trees. Two or three thousand have been destroyed no remedy for the scourge The bark becomes cankerous, the branches die, and the tree which has been attacked, has to be cut down.
 Dr.. Clinton, who has been making special study of the dread disease, said that there were fully 100 towns in the State in which the disease was present He is very keen at detecting the presence of the orange colOred globules, no bigger than a pin, which conta aims the spores. The fungus att tacks the bark, and after it gets in it's work, the bark looks as if it were dented.
 The disease works at least a year before the bad effects are noticed. When the branches are dead, it takes no expert to see that the, life of the tree is passing away, but there is no help. The disease may spread to other trees, but there is no way of knowing which trees it will attack and which it will pass by.
 The experiments of Dr. Clinton have reached such stage that he is able to obtain cultures of the spores and can inoculate trees with the disease. He is experimenting by cutting out diseased parts and sealing up the wound with tar, in the hope that the of the tree, but experiments of this kind 'have not yet demonstrated their. worth. One thing is certain, and that is that spraying does no good
 There are vacious theories advanced as to the disease. There are chestnut trees in Europe and there are chest nut trees of different nature in Japan. It is the belief of Dr. Clin- ton that the chestnut disease is similar to a disease which attacks European chestnuts. The government fungus authorities do not agree with Dr. Clin- ton in this theory, but admit that the Japanese chestnuts will succumb to < i1 fIof moths and other insect life which have caused havoc in this country are prevalent in Europe. Owing to the l presence of other insects, which prey upon the insects in Europe, they have not become the nuisance that they have inS this country. Fungus pre- sents a different problem for study | than insect life. Yet the presence of | a condition as a scourge in this coun- | try, which is not a scourge in Europe | leads to the guess that the same com parison may exist in the fungus | world
 While the government experts think that the chestnut disease is a new dis ease which has come into being with in the last few years, Dr. Clinton | thinks that it is one that has been established for years. He believes 1 that, if the proper conditions should | arise in Europe, the European chest nuts would undergo a devastation such as America is undergoing. The dis ease having lain dormant has now be- come active and destructive
 The reason for the sudden awaken ing into life forms the most interest ing part of Dr. C1inton's theory He laws the blame on the weather He thinks that the extreme weather of the last few years has weakened the chest nuts so that they have not been able to throw off the disease, as they did in years gone by.
 The winters of 1901-2, J9O2-3 and 19O3-4 were extremely cold. The sum mers since then have been dry. Ac- cording to Dr. C1inton's theory, the chestnut trees have been weakened by these extremes of weather and are not able to throw off the fungus growth. Those which are strong sur