128 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



Ground up' and mixed with a little milk and salt, to which 

 the more extravagant may add an egg and some butter, 

 a very palatable cake is produced, while polenta^ a very 

 popular Souths European dish, may be made by boiling 

 chestnut-flour in milk until it becomes thick. Another 

 preparation one may come across is chatigna, which is 

 merely chestnuts boiled, mashed, and seasoned ; while the 

 joy of roasting chestnuts on the bars no Briton can 

 surely be oblivious to, and it is an interesting touch 

 of our kinship in experience with the past to find an author, 

 some three hundred years ago, warning his readers that 

 " unlesse the shell be first cut the chestnuts skip suddenly 

 with a cracke out of the fire whilst they be rosting." 



The edible or Spanish chestnut generally bears its fruits 

 in bunches of two or three, or, more rarely, in clusters of 

 four, but we have known of a cluster gathered in the 

 New Forest that consisted of fifteen, the largest being 

 about an inch in their greatest diameter. This was, of 

 course, very abnormal. 



HORSE CHESTNUT (.^sculus Hippocastanum) 



The Spanish chestnut naturally suggests to us the 

 horse chestnut, of which a representation, in its fruiting 

 stage, is given in our nineteenth illustration. It is 

 botanically the ^Esculus Hippocastanum. The resemblance 

 between the two chestnuts is one of popular name only ; 

 they are botanically entirely distinct. The generic name 

 is from esca, food, while the specific name is a compound 

 signifying horse and chestnut. It was also, by the older 

 writers, called Castama equina, from the resemblance of 



