THE CHESTNUT 53 



fruited raspberries that had a share in the devel- 

 opment of some fruits that presently attained 

 commercial importance. 



But perhaps there was nothing in the entire 

 consignment that was destined to produce seed- 

 lings with more interesting possibilities of devel- 

 opment than the twenty-five "monster" chest- 

 nuts. For the hereditary factors that these nuts 

 bore were to have an important influence in de- 

 veloping new races of chestnuts of strange habits 

 of growth — chestnuts dwarfed to the size of 

 bushes, yet bearing mammoth nuts, and of such 

 precocity of habit as sometimes to begin bearing 

 when only six months from the seed. 



To be sure, other chestnut strains were 

 blended with the Japanese before these anom- 

 alous results were produced; but it is certain 

 that the oriental parents had a strong influence 

 in determining some at least of the most inter- 

 esting peculiarities of the new hybrid races. 



Very Mixed Ancestry 



That the antecedents of the precocious chest- 

 nuts may be clearly revealed, let me say at the 

 outset that the Japanese forms were hybridized 

 with the three other species as soon as they were 

 old enough to be mated, and that the hybrids in 

 turn were crossed and recrossed until the strains 



