SOME LEADING NUT TREES. 305 



The usual plan has been to set out two-year-old seedlings 

 once transplanted and graft them the next spring after 

 they have become well established. By culture early in 

 the season and the use of cover-crops of the legumes later, 

 the grafted varieties soon come into bearing. Clean cul- 

 ture through the season has not given good results, as the 

 exposed earth during the hot period gets too warm for the 

 health of the trees and roots (126). 



It is best to plant the native and European varieties in 

 rows thirty feet apart, running north and south. To give 

 an approach to forestry conditions, they may be planted 

 only eighteen feet apart in the rows. The smaller-growing 

 Japan varieties should also have ample space between the 

 rows, not less than twenty -five feet, and may be planted 

 fifteen feet apart in the rows running north and south. 



In all parts the chestnut is a dry-land or hill tree. In 

 the "West, on high, dry ridges, it is grown up to the 44th 

 parallel, but on rich drift-soil, where corn thrives best, the 

 trees are short-lived and unfruitful. The tree does not 

 seem capable of self-pollination. In no case has the writer 

 known a tree in isolated position to bear nuts. Yet blocks 

 planted with a single variety bear well. Where varieties 

 of different species are intermingled in Europe, the cross- 

 pollination gives hybrids when the nuts are planted. This 

 seems true also in this country, as we now have natural 

 hybrids between the chestnut and chinquapin in the 

 South. 



A main trouble in the commercial growing of the chest- 

 nut is the attack of the weevil. Growers in Europe and 

 America pour boiling-hot water over the freshly gathered 

 nuts. The covered chestnuts are then stirred to prevent 

 cooking them. Those not perfect, on account of weevil 

 perforation, will float on the top. Treated in this way the 

 nuts are not further troubled with weevil, and keep better 



