talogues.

All of these specimens shown today are from my country place at
Stamford, Connecticut, where the mercury in the thermometer leads one to
make quotations relating to the Eve of Saint Agnes; five or ten degrees
below the zero of Fahrenheit occasionally, and once down to twenty
degrees below without injury to any kind of chestnut so far as I could
observe.

I cannot make an exhibit of the golden-leaved chinquapin, from the
Pacific slope, because tragedy came to all of my little trees of this
species, and like most of the Pacific slope plants they are not very
joyous in the east. One lot lived through one winter at Merribrooke, but
they were the first green things that my cows saw in the springtime, and
further comment would be surplus. A single specimen took courage in its
root and grew finely until autumn, but it was near a path and somebody
pulled it up and left it lying stark naked on the ground. Botanists have
recently made two species of the golden-leaved chinquapin, one of the
species attaining a height of more than one hundred feet. If
horticulturists will secure specimens of _Castanopsis chrysophilla_ from
the region of Mount Shasta in California I presume that this beautiful
evergreen chinquapin may be taught to grow in some of our gardens. It is
cultivated in the gardens of temperate Europe. In our north it should be
planted close to a running brook, where the roots of young trees can
carry water in plenty to the evergreen top while the ground is frozen
hard in winter.

Our common chinquapin of the east is perhaps the one that will be
cultivated most profitably in the region between the Rocky Mountains
and the Atlantic coast. The beauty of freshly picked bush chinquapin
nuts is not rivalled by that of any other kind of nut that I have ever
seen. The exquisitely polished mahogany color comes out of a light downy
cloud near the apex of the nut, dark as midnight for a moment and then
shading through glows of lively chestnut until it dawns in a dreamy
cream color at the base, with just enough suggestion of green to temper
the reds.

If any gourmet with a color soul could serve each one of his friends to
a plate of twenty freshly picked bush chinquapins along with two Bennett
persimmons, and all resting upon late September leaves of tupelo or of
sweet gum the friends would remain and live at his expense while the
combination lasted.

Furthermore, the children must always be taken into consideration al