So 



HARDV/ICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



the depredations of rats and mice, who find the sweet 

 nuts a toothsome morsel. 



Our ancient authorities, however much they may 

 have esteemed the tree and its fruit — which latter 

 they credited with having some healing properties 

 and having "a tendency to make flesh" — seem to 

 have known nothing of it as a staple article of food, 

 such as it has since been throughout Spain, the south 

 of France, Italy, and Southern Europe generally, 

 where it is eaten raw, roasted, ground to flour, or 

 otherwise prepared as an article of daily diet, for 

 which purpose its cultivation has been carefully pro- 

 moted and practised for many centuries. 



There is a passage in a work by Oliver de Serres, 

 written in the sixteenth century, in praise of the 

 Sardian and Tuscan chestnuts, which answer to the 

 description of those now so largely grown and care- 

 fully harvested throughout Dauphine and also in Var 

 au Luc ; these fruits are called "Marrons de Lyon." 

 This is probably the same species as that referred to 

 by the Italian Targione in 1170, who informs us that 

 the "marrone" or "marone"was extensively used 

 in Italy in the Middle Ages. Another authority states 

 that in 1686 Perigord, Limosin, and Auvergne were 

 so full of forests of chestnut trees that the common 

 people had no other food all the year round ; adding, 

 ' ' so they can afford to work very cheap, and do for 

 next to nothing ; they drink water." It is, however, 

 not the wild Castanea which furnishes the nuts that 

 are principally consumed in the south of Europe 

 and exported to more northern countries, but culti- 

 vated varieties, whose nuts are both larger and 

 sweeter than the wild. 



It is difficult to say when the chestnut tree reached 

 England, so long has it been naturalised in our woods ; 

 and in olden times, if not now, it grew to considerable 

 size, so that its timber was used for building. Of its 

 wood many suppose the roof of Westminster Abbey 

 and the Church of St. Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, 

 whose date is of the time of William Rufus, to be 

 built, though we must allow other authorities state 

 them both to be built of a species of oak (Querctts 

 sessijlora). However this may be, no chestnut 

 timber has been used for building in England for 

 above two hundred years. The wood is extremely 

 hard and durable, as the writer can testify, from the 

 fact of the great difficulty experienced in piercing a 

 beam in her own house some few years back. This 

 beam had to be bored for the passage of an ordinary 

 gas-pipe, ar.d for a time it defied the strength and 

 skill of a clever mechanic, who pronounced it the 

 hardest and soundest beam he had ever met with. 

 The house had then been built above two hundred 

 years. 



Many of our writers upon forestry have descanted 

 upon the chestnut and its charms ; only old Nicholas 

 Culpepper dismisses it summarily, probably because 

 it did not subserve either his astrology or his physic. 

 " It were as needless to describe a tree so commonly 



known as to tell a man he hath gotten a mouth," says 

 he. Evelyn, on the other hand, in his delightful 

 " Sylva," commends to us "those of Portugal or 

 Bayonne, choosing the largest, brownest, and most 

 ponderous for fruit, such as Pliny calls Coctivce ; but 

 the lesser ones for raising timber." To test the nuts 

 for seed, he recommends the "water ordeal," and 

 counsels to "reject the swimmers"; the nuts to be 

 then again dried for thirty days, to go through a 

 second water ordeal, and then to be planted, " point 

 upmost, as you plant tulips." He adds, " Pliny will 

 tell you they come not up unless sown four or five in 

 a hole ; but this is false, if they be good, as you may 

 presume all those to be which pass the examination. 

 If you design to set them in winter, I counsel you to 

 inter them within their husks, which, being every 

 way armed, are a good protection against the mouse, 

 and a providential integument. Pliny, from this 

 natural guard, concludes them to be excellent food, 

 and doubtless Cresar thought them so, when he 

 transplanted them from Sardis, first into Italy, 

 whence they were propagated into France, and thence 

 among us — another encouragement to make such 

 experiments out of foreign countries." 



" The chestnut is, next the oak, one of the most 

 sought after by the carpenter and joiner. It hath 

 formerly built a good part of our ancient houses in 

 the city of London, as doth yet appear." 



" I had once a very large barn near the city, framed 

 entirely of this timber, and certainly the trees grew 

 not far off, probably in some woods near the town ; 

 for in the description of London, written by P'itz- 

 Stephens in the reign of Henry II., he speaks of a 

 very large forest which grew on the boreal part of it. 

 A very goodly thing it seems, and as well stored with 

 all sorts of good timber as with venison and all kinds 

 of chase ; and yet some will not allow the chestnut 

 to be freeborn of this island, but of that I make littl e 

 doubt." After recommending the poles for stakes 

 and palisades, and for " pedaments " for vine props 

 and for hops, our author goes on to discover certain 

 moral characteristics of the tree. " I cannot celebrate 

 the tree for its sincerity ; it being found that, con- 

 trary to the oak, it will make fair show outwardly, 

 when it is all decayed and rotten within ; but this is 

 somewhat recompensed, if it be true, that the beams 

 made of chestnut tree have this property — that, being 

 somewhat brittle, they give warning, and premonish 

 the danger by a certain crackling, so as, it is said, to 

 have frighted those out of the baths at Antandro, 

 whose roof was made with this material." 



Bemoaning our English extravagance, he further 

 writes: "But we give that fruit to our swine in 

 England which is amongst the delicacies of princes 

 in other countries, and, being of the larger nut, is a 

 lusty and masculine food for rusticks at all times, and 

 of better nourishment for husbandmen than cole and 

 rusty bacon, yea, or beans to boot ; instead of which 

 they boil them in Italy with their bacon, and in 



