out
that.

Dr. Moss: I am not an expert. They say an expert is someone who, the
more he studies, knows less about practically nothing at all. That's a
good deal my shape. I planted before the war Chinese seed in Kentucky
and a good many of those put on burs in the nursery row. I gave them
away in the community. Out of the whole bunch, some of them 20 feet
tall, I know of one outstanding nut in that bunch and it's off by
itself, apparently a self-pollinizer[16], and puts out a crop of good
nuts.

Dr. Cross: I should like to ask Dr. Crane if it would not be possible to
investigate the situation in China rather than wait to work this out.
Certainly, the Chinese have sufficient knowledge of grafting and
propagation to have been working on this long ago, and since these came
from there, let's look into that phase of it.

Dr. Crane: I did investigate the situation in China when I was there.
Unfortunately in China, although it is one of our oldest countries and
longest civilizations, they don't do much grafting. They grow their
trees from seed, but they have certain seed trees that they select their
seed from, and within a community, within a valley, you will have a
certain type of chestnut. They call them varieties. They are not
varieties. That's the situation. Most all of them are different, but
they have accomplished the fixing of certain characteristics.

Now, in South China the nuts are larger in size, they are stronger
growing trees than they are in the North. I think that we will find that
that's the situation in this country. The Chinese chestnut is one that
does have a high heat requirement, just like pecan, and grown under
conditions where they have high heat they are bigger in size and make
more growth and probably they come into bearing sooner.

But I didn't see anything grafted in China, and I was all over the
country from the most northern parts to the most southern parts where
chestnuts are produced. I could make a lot of observations myself, but I
had to talk through interpreters, and sometimes you couldn't tell what
the interpreter meant. But as near as I could tell, they were all
seedlings. When he would tell me there was such-and-such a variety, I
would ask him what it meant in English. He didn't know. When I found
how they were propagated I found they planted the seed. When I found
where they got the seed it was from a certain seed tree.

So we have within the valleys what they call varieties, but th