LUTHER BURBANK 



In the wild state, the chestnut needs a spiny bur 

 to protect it from squirrels and birds. It has de- 

 veloped this protective covering through natural 

 selection, just as the walnut has developed its thick 

 coat filled with bitter and astringent juices. But 

 the cultivated chestnut does not require the pro- 

 tective spines, and it will be obviously advantage- 

 ous from the standpoint of the cultivator to have 

 these removed. 



I have for some years been working on the 

 hybrid chestnuts with this in mind. I now have 

 one variety that is relatively spineless, its burs not 

 having more than one spicule where the ordi- 

 nary chestnut bur has ten. There is every reason 

 to expect that in a few generations more I shall 

 develop a chestnut that has a bur as smooth as 

 that of the walnut. The partially spineless variety 

 that I have developed has nuts that are not as 

 large or as good in quality as could be desired. But 

 for the moment I am selecting it solely with refer- 

 ence to the removal of spines; being confident that 

 once this is attained there will be no difficulty in 

 breeding the good qualities of the hybrid nut into 

 the combination. 



The new partially spineless variety has been 

 developed merely by selection from a hybrid seed- 

 ling that produced nuts showing a tendency to 

 have fewer spines than ordinarily. Of course the 



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