(16) A group of Japanese chestnuts. They blight and die and blight and live and are not given much attention as they are of little value anyway. The chestnut blight (_Endothia parasitica_) attacks the Japanese chestnut about as freely as it does the American chestnut. The trees do not die from it quite so quickly and may bear for some years before dying.
(17) A group of Japanese persimmons in a protected corner of a west-facing side hill. Most of the Japanese persimmons are not hardy in Connecticut, but an occasional variety given a moderate degree of protection will manage to live pretty well. They are uncertain trees, however, as two of the trees grafted to Bennett Japaneses persimmons from Newark, N. J., had two-year-old shoots winter-killed this year. These were on low ground. I shall put my other Bennetts on hill sides.
(18) American sweet chestnut grafted upon Japanese stock. Ordinarily Asiatic and American chestnuts do not make very satisfactory exchange stocks. In this case the American chestnut happens to be doing very well. The variety is known as the Merribrooke. Among the many thousands of chestnut trees here when I bought the place this one bore the best nut of all, very large and of high quality, and beautifully striped with alternate longitudinal stripes of dark and light chestnut color. The parent tree was one of the very first to go down with the blight ten years ago, and the standing dead trunk was removed at the time when I cut out five thousand dead or dying chestnut trees. Stump sprouts of the Merribrooke variety survived for grafting purposes, and I have now kept the variety going by patient grafting ever since, on new stocks, hoping to carry the variety along until this epidemic of blight runs out of its protoplasmic energy.
(19) Ordinary Japanese chestnut. With fairly good crop of large nuts, but not of good quality, except for cooking purposes.
(20) A group of hybrids resulting from placing the pollen of the Siebold Japanese walnut upon the pistillate flowers of our butternut. The young trees have not borne as yet.
(21) Hybrids between the common American hazel and the European purple hazel. There are a number of these hybrids, and none of them with nuts better than those of either parent, consequently I give them little attention. Some of the hybrids, not as yet bearing, may prove to be more valuable. We have to make lots of hybrids in order to get a small percentage of important ones. In this particular lot the hybrid has taken on a habit of the mother parent, the common American hazel, growing long stoloniferous roots, an undesirable feature.