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 J 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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