Just about forty years ago the first blight resistant chestnuts were introduced into the Southeast. This event was to have more far-reaching effects than could be foreseen at that time, as is illustrated by the present extensive interest in the growing of these chestnuts as an orchard crop. Chestnut blight, a fungus disease of the native American chestnut (_Castanea dentata_ (Marsh) Borkh), first appeared on Long Island in 1904 and destroyed this magnificent nut and timber tree. A Phytophthora root disease added its toll so that a bearing tree of this species is a rarity in the East at the present time. The U. S. Department of Agriculture began making introductions of two species of chestnut from the Orient in 1906, both of which were resistant to the blight which was then destroying the native American chestnut. Of the two species, the Japanese chestnut (_C. crenata_ Sieb. and Zuce.) and the Chinese chestnut (_C. mollissima_ Bl.), only the latter proved to have much merit other than blight resistance and chestnut growing in the eastern United States in recent years has been confined almost entirely to the Chinese chestnut. About twenty-five years ago, after the first introduction from the Orient of seed nuts of blight resistant chestnut species, the U. S. Department of Agriculture distributed a few seedling trees to various interested growers in the Southeast. Some of these trees are still growing and bearing good crops of nuts and have reached rather large size. The distribution of trees produced from nuts imported at subsequent intervals was continued by the U. S. Department of Agriculture until rather widely scattered planting of several species under varied soil, climatic, and cultural conditions was attained. As time passed it became clear that only the Chinese chestnut had promise as a commercial crop for the production of nuts. As a timber tree none of the introduced species has as yet shown outstanding merit. [Footnote 2: Formerly Associate Pomologist, U. S. Pecan Field Station, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Albany, Georgia.] +General Observations+