LUTHER BURBANK 
proved hybrid chestnuts on ordinary American 
stock have proved enormously productive. 
It has been estimated that rocky and otherwise 
useless hillsides may be made productive, where 
practically nothing else could be grown that would 
be of special value. 
IMPROVEMENTS TO BE MADE 
In continuing my experiments in developing 
the chestnut, I have endeavored to effect wider 
hybridizations. In particular I wish to cross the 
hybrid chestnut with the evergreen golden chest- 
aut (Castanopsis chrysophylls) of California, but 
the wild trees of this species are so distant from 
my grounds that I have not found it feasible to 
gather their pollen, and the ones I have under 
cultivation, although fifteen years of age, have not 
yet blossomed. 
This golden chestnut is a very remarkable 
species. On the heights of the Sierra Nevada 
mountains it grows as a shrub only four or five 
feet tall, much branched. These shrubs produce 
nuts quite abundantly. Along the coast the same 
tree grows to a height of 150 feet, with an immense 
trunk. One can scarcely believe that the little bush 
and the gigantic tree are of the same species. 
In point of fact there is a considerable differ- 
ence in the constitution of the two varieties, the 
giant from along the coast being rather tender, 
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