LUTHER BURBANK 



the reader has already heard; and climbing black- 

 berries and yellow and red fruited raspberries that 

 had a share in the development 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 25 "monster" chestnuts. For the 

 hereditary factors that these nuts bore were to 

 have an important influence in developing new 

 races of chestnuts of strange habits of growth 

 chestnuts dwarfed to the size of bushes, yet bear- 

 ing 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 anomalous results 

 were produced; but it is certain that the oriental 

 parents had a strong influence in determining 

 some at least of the most interesting 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 



[98] 



