84 THE XUT CULTURIST. 



situations the subsoil is invariably sand, gravel or porous 

 shale. 



The range of climate in which the native sweet 

 chestnut thrives is quite extensive, as it is found spar- 

 ingly in Maine in latitude 44, extending westward, 

 but not very abundant on this line, through New Eng- 

 land and New York, crossing the Niagara river, skirting 

 the north shore of Lake Erie in Canada, and thence into 

 southern Michigan, but does not reach Illinois. From 

 this line southward it increases in abundance in Vir- 

 ginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee and 

 Kentucky. But in following this tree southward we 

 meet another indigenous species, widely known as the 

 chinquapin (Castanea pumila). This species is indig- 

 enous to southern New Jersey, and sparingly in parts of 

 Pennsylvania, becoming more plentiful as we proceed 

 southward, the two species named overlapping and in 

 part occcupying the same region ; but the chinquapin 

 extends further south, and also to the westward, near its 

 northern limits crossing the Mississippi into southern 

 Missouri, then extends south again, becoming quite 

 abundant in Arkansas. 



The European chestnut, in its many varieties, ex- 

 tends over about the same number of degrees of latitude 

 in Europe as our species do here, although reaching a 

 higher latitude in countries bordering on the Atlantic, 

 as shown in the old chestnut trees of England. The 

 Oriental chestnut has also a very wide range, but the 

 limits are not so well known as those of the European 

 and American species ; but a study of its geographical 

 distribution is of considerable importance, now that we 

 are importing these nuts for cultivation. The same is 

 also true of the European varieties, and the cultivator 

 who neglects to take this matter into consideration will 

 fail to secure whatever advantages may have accrued 

 from acclimation, an agency which, undoubtedly, has 



