A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 69 



fingers. Shield, plate and ring budding are used on the Chestnut with about 

 equal success ; plate and ring budding, however, being much more liable to 

 succeed than shield budding. In performing the latter operation the shield of 

 bark from the scion should be cut two inches long and wide in proportion. 

 Too small stock, which would be of very good size for Apple, Pear, Peach, etc., 

 will not do to be budded. When the stock or shoot is of the size of the medium 

 finger or thumb, or larger yet, I always use plate and ring budding. If the ring 

 of bark taken from the scion goes only half way round the stock, it is what is 

 called plate budding ; if it reaches all around it, it is what is called ring bud- 

 ding ; but in both cases it is the same principle, only that in plate budding so 

 much of the bark is left on the stock, only enough being taken out to allow the 

 insertion in its place of the ring of bark from the scion, generally smaller than 

 the stock. Chestnut stock sometimes does not grow the first year large enough 

 to be budded ; in that case it .is left over for the ensuing year, being cut back 

 close to the ground in the Spring to make it grow a new shoot of the proper 

 size ; for the operation of budding is much more successful on wood of the 

 year's growth than on two-year-old wood exactly the same as with the Wal- 

 nut, and don't you forget it. 



Son, AND EXPOSURE;. The Chestnut is a hardy tree whose crop, except 

 that of the Japan Chestnut, is seldom injured by late frosts in the Spring. I 

 never had any of my French varieties of Chestnuts injured on my place by frost 

 at any time of the year, and, furthermore, they bear regularly and heavily every 

 year. The Chestnut is a regular mountain tree, and may be regarded right at 

 home in our mountains. The soil best suited to the Chestnut is a sandy, gran- 

 itic, or ferruginous sandy-clayish, deep soil. In Nevada county, up to an alti- 

 tude of three thousand feet, can be seen twenty-five-year-old French Chestnuts 

 bearing well and bearing nice nuts. This nut tree is certainly better adapted 

 to Central and Northern California than to the southern part of the State, and 

 it is a fact that wherever the Olive does well the Chestnut does badly, for it is 

 too hot for it. The Chestnut will mature its nuts well at an altitude of three 

 thousand feet in the latitude of Northern California and at four thousand feet, 

 probably, in the mountains of Southern California ; but wherever Summers are 

 either too short or too cold for the nuts to mature well, only such varieties as 

 are known to mature their nuts in a shorter time should be planted, and there 

 are such varieties of Chestnuts, though the nuts are smaller. 



In mountain gorges and with a sunny exposure the Chestnut does splen- 

 didly, otherwise an eastern or northern exposure is best for the tree. In the 

 red clay of our mountains, with a little mixture of decomposed granite, in soil 

 so hard and impermeable that holes dug in it will hold water for weeks, the 

 Chestnut does surprisingly 'well, and I have an idea that when planted way 

 up in the mountains, say at an altitude of Nevada City or two thousand five 



