ON PAPER-SHELL WALNUTS 
and a nut that was practically without a protecting 
shell. 
One of the thin-shelled new walnuts was intro- 
duced under the name of the Santa Rosa Soft- 
Shell. It was produced by the usual method of 
selective breeding, and in producing it of course 
other qualities were in mind besides the thinness 
of shell. In particular, selection was made for 
early and abundant bearing, whiteness and pal- 
atability of meat, and absence of tannin—it being 
tannin which gives the brown color and bitter 
taste to the older or ordinary walnuts. The per- 
fected Santa Rosa may be depended upon to give 
more than twice as large a crop as the best speci- 
mens of the France variety of walnuts, known as 
the Franquette. 
It should be explained, however, that there are 
two varieties of the Santa Rosa Soft-Shell. One 
blooms with the ordinary walnut trees, while the 
other, like the Franquette, blooms two weeks later, 
generally escaping the frosts that sometimes affect 
the early bloomer. In producing the new soft- 
shell, I inspected nuts of the ordinary walnut from 
many sources. There is great variation among 
these nuts, and I found some that were almost 
entirely without shells. One seedling had nuts 
with the meats half exposed; that is, with shell 
covering a portion of its surface, suggesting the 
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