involved. As yet, in order to get a reasonable
number of nuts for planting, I have to cross-pollinize them by hand, and
I was surprised and pleased this year to find one Chinese chestnut tree
with staminate bloom, allowing me to make a cross pollinization with an
American sweet chestnut and a Chinquapin type chestnut, which grows to
be a tall tree. These crosses ought to insure trees with a great degree
of hardiness, and should the blight ever strike this territory in the
future they should be highly resistant as well. A few of my chestnut
trees produce nuts that may be the size of the best Chinese chestnuts,
but I am just as fond of the smaller and sweeter chestnuts of the
several Chinquapin type trees which seem to be consistent bearers and
certainly are prolific. There are three trees in a close group which are
strains of the European chestnut combined with American chestnut. These
bear rather large nuts and usually every year have a few and of high
quality. It is conceivable that by crossing this hybrid with Chinese
pollen that something unusual could be produced.

The pure Chinese strain has not proved hardy in this territory and I
have never matured a pure variety. However, there are dozens of
seedlings that are not old enough to prove whether there might be a
hardy specimen among them that may at some time in the future be relied
upon for this species of chestnut.

One other species of nut requires a little space here since it has shown
that it can bear crops and is hardy enough to be included among the
hardy nuts. It is the Gellatly heartnut. It is very subject to the
butternut curculio, but in spite of that it continues to grow quite well
when grafted on black walnut,--a difficult piece of propagation,
however. A tree in St. Paul, on the boulevard, thrives next to a large
butternut, and bears nuts practically every year which the squirrels
delight in cutting down while still green. This tree is not bothered by
the curculio since the curculio does not infest the large butternut near
it.

In summing up the whole situation, I would say that my experiments over
thirty years quite adequately prove that the walnuts, hickories, hybrid
hazels and chestnuts can most certainly be set out in orchard form and
in favorable locations. However, pecan, hiccan, English walnuts and
almonds have not proved hardy enough to indicate that they can be relied
upon for steady crops of nuts although in some instances varieties show
a