up by horticulturists for extensive
development. It promises to become one of our important sources of food
supply for tomorrow. If we were to develop all of our plant resources at
once it would be an unkindness to the horticulturists of two thousand
years from now, who would be left moping around with nothing to do.
Chinquapin nuts borne in heavy profusion by the plants are delicious in
quality, but usually too small to attract customers aside from the wood
folk. The wood of the chinquapin of tree form (_C. pumila var.
arboriformis_) is valuable for purposes to which wood of the common
American chestnut is put, and some of the tree chinquapins acquire an
earned increment of two or three feet diameter of trunk, and a height of
more than fifty feet. The bush chinquapin on the other hand feels rather
exclusive when attaining a height of as much as fifteen feet.

I present for inspection a freshly cut branch from an ordinary bush
chinquapin, loaded with burs, indicating the prolific nature of the
variety. The nuts in this particular specimen are small. The next branch
exhibited is from a similar bush, but with nuts quite as large as those
of the average common chestnut. The horticulturist has only to graft or
bud his ordinary run of chinquapin stocks from some one bush which bears
large nuts, and he will then have a valuable graded market product. The
larger the nut the less prolific the plant is a rule which holds good
with the fruiting of almost any plant.

Look at this branch from a tree chinquapin. It is not remarkable in any
way, but the leaves seem to be a little larger than those of the bush
chinquapin. My tree chinquapins came from Stark's nursery in Missouri.
The first two which came into bearing had nuts quite as large as those
of the common chestnut and I imagined that a discovery of value had been
made, but other trees of this variety later bore very small nuts, and
all of the tree chinquapin nuts, large and small, were much duller in
color than those of the bush chinquapin. My final conclusion is that so
far as nuts alone are concerned we may plant and cultivate either the
tree variety or the bush variety of the species and then bud or graft
any number of stocks from some one plant which bears the best product.

DR. AUGUSTUS STABLER: Is it a somewhat finer grained wood than the
ordinary chestnut?

DR. MORRIS: I think it is. All the chestnuts have rather coarse wood. It
is strong, hard, durable, and valuable