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 The Japanese chestnut is a weaker tree than the Chinese and somewhat more susceptible to blight, but there are many trees now living in the United States after forty years of exposure to the blight. This species has an enormous productivity, great precocity, and an astounding variation in the flavor and size of the nuts, which range from the size of your little finger up to nuts that rival eggs in size.

A Japanese chestnut called the Japan Mammoth, grown years ago by one Julius Schnadelbach of Grand Bay, Alabama, was photographed life size, and the photograph showed a profile 2.5 inches by 1.9 inches. A large egg measures 2.16 by 1.72 inches. Multiply the length by the breadth, and the Schnadelbach chestnut gives 4.75 square inches, the egg 3.715 square inches. Harvesting chestnuts like the Schnadelbach would therefore be like gathering eggs or potatoes, and could perhaps be done by hand for forage, perhaps even in high-wage America, because almost the only labor cost about it would be for picking them up. But pigs will pick them up without charge!

The flavor of the Japanese chestnut is not high, but the nut is regarded as a good food in Japan, when cooked. Certainly it is good enough in its natural condition for the pigs and other farm animals.

The American chinkapin is relatively blight resistant, tremendously productive, and very precocious, producing its burrs in strings. The very small, shiny nuts are easily the king of all chestnuts for sweetness. Turkeys might pick them up and fatten themselves on them and get a rare flavor in so doing.

The theory of plant breeding depends upon (1) the fact of variations of individuals within the species or within the crossing range, and (2) crossing to get new combinations of qualities, and what is even more significant, getting qualities not in either parent.

The amount of variation among trees of the same species is a