them for shade purposes in his yard.
But he can receive a limited number if he is willing to use them for
game. So in scattering them over the state, so many people wanted so
many of them that if we didn't watch we'd have all of our chestnuts
planted in three or four, or half a dozen spots in the state, and we are
interested in learning as much as we can by having them put out at
different elevations, different sites and under different conditions, so
we had to limit it to ten to an individual in 1943. We have gradually
upped that as our production has gone up, from 15 to 20, then 40, and
this year we are offering 50 to any land owner in the State of West
Virginia.

Now you can see why we are interested in trying to improve the nut. If
we are going to distribute them all over the state, let's distribute a
good nut, a nut that is not only a heavy bearer for the game, but a nut,
too, that is fit for human consumption.

In our site recommendations we have been trying to follow pretty well
the ideas of the boys from Beltsville, and we found out that what they
have been telling us is just about right. In other words, we are setting
our chestnuts in the cove types, moist with gentle slope, preferably on
the north, and we are getting better growth there. It doesn't mean as
far as we are concerned that it doesn't grow well on drier land and on
rich hill-tops but the growth is so much greater when it's put in good
ground and under those conditions. In other words, it needs a tulip
poplar site; where tulip poplar is growing or has recently grown might
be one way to select a site for our chestnuts.

In these five year now that we have been distributing these chestnuts we
have distributed something like 200,000. Now, we know that all of those
seedlings haven't been good strains, but they have been the best we
could do at that time as we were going along. We hope to learn from you
people, and we hope you can give us help in improving our strains so
that we can distribute better chestnuts over the state.

We haven't had a good system of checking up, until the present time, on
plantings that have been made in the past, but we are initiating a
system just now wherein all plantations that have been made from forest
stock will have regular examination all over the state of West Virginia,
and we are including chestnuts in that. We have made some checks in the
state on certain selected sites and have found out, strange enough, that
th