There are few trees more beautiful or desirable for ornamental planting in parks or large lawns, or about farm yards than the French chestnut. It has been pretty satisfactorily proven by experiments in various parts of the country that the culture of large varieties of chestnuts for the fruit is profitable when good trees can be secured. The Trench chestnut is the best, it being the most hardy and productive of the large varieties. There is very little, if any difference, between the French and Spanish, except in vigor, the former being more hardy. These terms, as used in nursery catalogues, are synonymous, and if it is certain that the trees are entirely hardy there is no preference as regards these names. The Italian is claimed by some to be the largest variety, but they are not any better flavored, and the trees are too tender to be desirable for general cultivation in this latitude.

Seedling chestnuts, like all other fruit trees, vary considerably in the important characteristics which make them valuable, viz.: hardiness, productiveness, size and quality of fruit; therefore, it is necessary to plant stock which has been grafted from bearing trees of known excellence, the same as would be done in planting apples, pears, cherries, or other kinds of fruit.

Another great advantage arising from grafting is early productiveness, worked trees commencing to bear much earlier than natural stocks.

In the spring of 1876, we grafted a lot of French chestnut seedlings, which were then about three feet high. In the autumn of 1878, two years after grafting, several of the trees had attained a height of eight feet, and were two inches in diameter of trunk, with fine, well-branched heads. Some of them bore fruit that season, the nuts being large, sound and perfect.

Grafted trees will generally come into profitable bearing at about the same age as apple trees, or from eight to ten years after grafting.

The seedlings which are imported from France are generally tender, and suffer more or less injury every severe winter, so that if not killed they are a long time in attaining sufficient size to bear a full crop of fruit, while stock raised from the seed of hardy trees which have been acclimated to this country are much hardier and more desirable.

The characteristics in growth which distinguish the French from the American chestnut are, the darker and heavier foliage, the brighter color of the young wood, and a more compact habit of growth, the true French chestnut generally forming a low, rounded head, similar to a large apple tree or Norway maple.

The quality of the nuts varies very much in different trees. When eaten raw there is a slight bitterness about the skin of nearly all of them, but much more in some than in others; they are not quite as sweet as the small American nuts, but when boiled or roasted, and the skin removed, their taste is very similar to that of the native variety, many persons being unable to distinguish between them.

We think that when all the merits of these chestnuts are better known, they cannot fail to be appreciated, and they will become one of the most popular shade trees.