LUTHER BURBANK 



appears that the chestnuts with which Mr. Bur- 

 bank was experimenting carried submerged in 

 their germ-plasm the possibilities of very pre- 

 cocious bearing. Always on the alert to observe 

 variation in this direction, Mr. Burbank selected 

 eagerly among the hybrid seedlings even of the 

 first generation for those that showed a pro- 

 pensity to rapid growth and early development. 

 By breeding only from these more precocious 

 plants, he had presently developed races of hy- 

 brid chestnuts that would blossom and fruit in 

 their second year, if their stalks were cut and 

 grafted on branches of older trees. 



Continuing the experiment, he finally developed 

 plants so extraordinarily precocious as to bear 

 large, fully matured nuts on the tiny stalk, grow- 

 ing on its own roots, in its first season. Within 

 six months of the time when a chestnut was 

 planted, the plant that sprang from that seed 

 might bear its two or three burs of chestnuts, thus 

 rivaling the familiar annual plants in its precocity 

 of development, and seeming to bid defiance to the 

 hereditary traditions of nut-bearing trees. 

 (! In their succeeding years these precocious 

 chestnuts attain the size of bushes, but they have 

 lost utterly the capacity to grow to tree-like dimen- 

 sions. In leaf and fruit they are unmistakably 

 chestnuts, but in manner of growth they have de- 

 parted absolutely from the recognized traditions 

 of their family. ' ' 



It should be explained, perhaps, that the an- 

 cestors of these precocious dwarfs were selected 



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