eased, but crosses with Japans and
the Chinese chestnut, _Castanea Molissima_, have been continued until
now there are over eight hundred in existence. In late years we have
used the Southern creeping chinquapin, C. alnifolia_, as a seed parent
to some extent, as it appears more resistant than the common species,
_C. pumila_, though it cannot be considered immune. The southern
chinquapin is hardy in the North, bears good-sized, sweet nuts for its
type, but is very late in ripening.

The Rush chinquapin, and other large-fruited, tall growing varieties
have also been used to some extent. The resulting hybrids make handsome
trees of rapid growth and bear profuse crops of very attractive nuts,
but are greatly injured by blight. As experience accumulated it was
found that the extreme caution used in the earlier trials to keep out
foreign pollen were scarcely needed and that merely covering the
pistillate blooms as soon as they could be distinguished with cotton
batting is all that is necessary, and also that hybrids may be produced
with considerable certainty in open pollination if the tree or branch is
kept entirely free from staminate tassels and the selected pollen is
promptly applied as soon as the stigmas become receptive.

Quite a number of chance or self-pollinated seedlings from choice
hybrids have been raised in the hope that their good qualities might be
perpetuated and the trouble and expense of grafting largely obviated
but, as with most other hybrids between distinct species, the seedlings
lacked sufficient uniformity to be of especial value. A few individuals
turned out superior to the parent but on the whole degeneracy, from the
nut-producers standpoint, appears among seedlings of hybrid chestnuts.

In 1909 the unfruited chinquapin hybrids, 68 in number, were transferred
to Arlington Farm, Virginia, and two years later Bell Experiment Plot
was established near Glendale, Maryland, largely for the purpose of
developing blight-resistant varieties of chestnuts as far as this can be
done by breeding and testing of wild forms. There are now over 2000
hybrids and seedlings of species at Bell ranging from one to ten years
of age. Of the original trees planted at Arlington about 20 remain.
They have formed handsome trees twenty feet high with tops almost as
wide in diameter and have borne many profuse crops of nuts mostly of
good quality and from three to six times as large and heavy as those of
the parent chinquapin