ON THE CHESTNUT 
In point of fact, all these methods were utilized, 
and in addition, of course, my usual method of 
rigorous selection was employed, so that I soon 
had a colony of chestnuts not only of the most 
complicated ancestry, but also a carefully selected 
colony in which none that did not show excep- 
tional traits of one kind or another had been 
permitted to remain. 
Precocious Traits 
Of the many rather striking peculiarities of the 
new hybrids, doubtless the one that attracts most 
general attention is the habit of precocious bear- 
ing. 
From the outset my hybrids were urged to early 
bearing, by the method of grafting and selection, 
as already noted; and of course I saved for further 
purposes of experiment only the individuals that 
were the most precocious. But, even so, I was not 
prepared to find my seedlings bearing large nuts 
in abundance in eighteen months from the time of 
planting the seed. Yet such extraordinary pre- 
cocity as this was shown by many of the seedlings 
in the third and subsequent generations. 
Moreover, if the grafts are taken from the seed- 
lings and placed on older trees, they would pro- 
duce, although not so abundantly, within six 
months after grafting. During the past ten years, 
seedlings have quite often produced nuts, like 
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