A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 67 



only one thousand copies of that book were published. The Department could 

 not be blamed for such a niggardly edition, which, as the Rural Press 

 remarked in its issue of May i6th, rendered it wholly inaccessible to the tens 

 of thousands who would be interested in it. Congress alone was to blame for 

 it. But to make up for the deficiency, the Rural Press published the principal 

 portions of the book, those relating to the Walnut and Almond, as being of 

 great interest to the people of this State. As you didn't give any extract from 

 that portion of the book relating to Chestnuts, I would like to have you pub- 

 lish in your columns a short essay of mine on that very nut. 



First, I would call your attention to a paragraph of the aforesaid book, 

 page 80, under the heading of " Budding and Grafting," doing great injustice 

 to that important member of the nut family, the Chestnut, as far as this State 

 is concerned, and reading as follows: " Neither budding nor grafting is very 

 successful with the Chestnut in the dry climate of California." 



As I have budded and grafted with success on my own place, in Nevada 

 City, for the last twenty-six years, thousands and thousands of Chestnuts, that 

 extract greatly surprised me; so I remonstrated with the Department against 

 such a sweeping assertion, telling them that they were doing a great injustice 

 to our State in publishing such an erroneous statement, especially in a work of 

 that kind, and assuring the Department that it had surely been imposed upon 

 by some ignorant horticulturist. 



Mr. S. B. Heiges, head pomologist of the Department, replied to me as 

 follows : 



Regarding your comment upon what is stated in the bulletin on "Nut 

 Culture," page 80, concerning grafting or budding the Chestnut in the dry 

 climate of California, I would state that you were the only party who reported 

 success, and that there are portions of California in which the climate perhaps 

 is much dryer than where you are located. From what I have been able to 

 learn, your climate more closely resembles that of the Eastern States than any 

 portion of California. Here, our successful Chestnut grafters consider any- 

 thing less than ninety per cent, as a partial failure. Amongst others who have 

 reported their experience in grafting and budding the Chestnut in California, I 

 may mention Luther Burbank, who reports: "Neither budding nor grafting 

 is very successful in this dry climate." 



Thus it appears that Mr. Luther Burbank was the person who gave the 

 Department such erroneous information. That Mr. Burbank met with failure in 

 budding and grafting the Chestnut on his place in Sonoma county I will not 

 dispute, though it greatly surprises me; but he should not have generalized, 

 and more so when his information was to be published in that book, and assert 

 that " neither budding nor grafting is very successful in the dry climate of 

 California." But it is a fact that Calif ornians are too apt, when failing to 

 accomplish one thing or another, to throw the blame on our dry climate, but 

 never on themselves. Now, let me tell you that such is not the case, for the 



