Show College Hides Hides' Chestnut Trees From North Carolina Plague RALEIGH N. N C Like C.-Like Like modern Noahs fleeing before the deluge of a deadly blight botanists at North Carolina State college are rearing young chestnut chestn t trees here tremulously tremulously hopeful that the Asiatic blight will not find them out this far from the chestnuts chestnut's natural habitat When the scourge has killed the last tree in the highlands and has no further victims to feed teed upon the young trees thriving on the campus here will be available for the long eons-long task of replenishing the earth They will not have long to wait walt Two decades ago the chestnut was Will one of ot North Carolinas Carolina's most lordly trees Highly prized as lumber it also was valuable for chemical extracts extracts ex tracts and for pulp But chiefly y it was beloved because of its fruit fruit fruit- the succulent chestnut Twenty five years ago mountain wagons drawn by oxen brought full loads of the chestnuts down Into the foothill towns making makin trips which lasted a week or two Once Furnished Bread Large easily cracked and alas oftentimes wormy the chestnut was almost the official nut of North Carolina To the Cherokees of the the chestnut was a traditional traditional food and the meat of the nut out was dried ground Into a meal mealand mealand and made Into bread Destruction of ot the chestnut was wu a calamitous event to the Indians About 1904 an Oriental fungus known a as appeared ap apo geared on the trees and with appalling appalling ap apo ap- ap palling speed swept through New England and entered the South It attacked the bark of the American chestnut girdled the Ule trunk and killed the tree with amazing dig dis patch The fungus was ver very prolific pro pro- and its Hs seed so light that every breeze wafted it on its lethal jour ney Now In 1939 great splotches of gray grey trunks In the live forests of I the Blue Ridge mountains bear witness witness wit wit- ness nen to the arboreal tragedy More than 95 per cent of North Carolinas Carolina's chestnut trees are dead or dying A Afew Afew Afew few survive but rather by chance than resistance and they too are doomed Every effort to halt the scourge tailing falling forestry men at the state college several ye years rs ago transplanted transplanted trans trans- planted healthy trees here miles from the chestnut belt After four years the young youna trees are healthy and thriving and their guardians speculate that when the blight has run its course their thin little line of sprouts will be the progenitors of another mighty chestnut forest In hi North Carolina |