iks}9) 
chestnuts which showed partial resistance to the bark blight were 
first successfully crossed in 1931 with resistant Japanese species, 
of 
stained were planted, and over a 
some of which were offered for the experiments by owners 
— 
private estates. The nuts so o 
period of about fifteen years some 1,000 hybrids from such crosses 
have been grown, together with a collection of nearly all species 
of Castanea in the world. The seedling trees have been set out 
at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, on private property at Hamden, 
Connecticut, and in other places which have been offered through 
the codperation of Prof. Ralph C. Hawley of the Yale School of 
Forestry, Dr. D. F. Jones of the Connecticut Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station at New Haven, Dr. W. W. Herrick, Sharon, 
Conn., The White Foundation, Litchfield, Conn., The Avon Old 
Farms School, Avon, Conn., and Mr. Archer M. Huntington, 
Redding Ridge, Conn., and others. 
In 1934, three of the Japanese-American hybrids bloomed, 
that a new generation could then be started for the first time. 
Beginning in 1934, crosses of American and Chinese species were 
made and, more recently, crosses of Japanese-American hybrids 
with Chinese trees. Records are kept of the rate of growth and 
disease resistance for each individual and the tallest and most 
resistant trees are selected for further breeding. The arm at pres- 
ent is to develop a race of chestnut trees of the desired character 
nuts 
which, by inter-pollination, will each year yield a quantity o 
for reforestation. 
In addition to breeding for a timber tree, the chestnut work has 
also for its purpose the breeding of a blight-resistant tree of robust 
growth and insect resistance, which bears’nuts of a high quality, 
and which exhibits resistance to cold and ‘drought. 
Not only by experimental breeding, but also by making use of 
the native chestnut trees or their sprouts, still found growing here 
and there throughout the natural range of the chestnut, is there 
a possibility of discovering a blight-resistant tree. In response to 
requests, nuts have been received from many of the States within 
this range and, as a result, more than 300 native chestnut trees 
are now growing at Hamden. 
The work has been conducted in codperation with the Division 
of Forest Pathology, Bureau of Plant Industry, Uuited States 
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