CATKIN-BEARING TRIBE 191 



cause shortness of breath 1 I confess the opinion is far older than I am ; I 



knew tradition was a friend to error before, but never that he was the father 



of slander : Or are men's tongues so given to slandering one another, that 



they must slander nuts too, to keep their tongues in use 1" He adds : 



" And so thus I have made an apology for nuts, which cannot speak for 



themselves." Besides being used medicinally, chocolate, and even bread, 



have been made of nuts ; and they were prized in former times for the oil 



which they yielded, the Hazel being cultivated for this produce. 



The pale-green catkins shed their pollen and fall, but the red stigmas 



ripen into fruits ; and clustering nuts, embrowned by Autumn's touch, have 



welcomed thousands, who, like Wordsworth, have gone forth with bounding 



spirits to seek them. 



' ' Among the woods, 

 And o'er the pathless rocks, I forced my way 

 Until, at length, I came to one dear nook 

 Unvisited, where not a broken bough 

 Droop'd with its wither'd leaves, ungracious sign 

 Of devastation, but the Hazels rose 

 Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung, 

 A virgin scene ! A little while I stood, 

 Breathing with such suppression of the heart 

 As joy delights in ; and, with wise restraint 

 Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed 

 The banquet. 



Then up I rose 

 And dragg'd to earth both branch and bough, with crash 

 And merciless ravage ; and the shady nook 

 Of Hazels, and the green and mossy bower, 

 Deform'd and sullied, patiently gave up 

 Their quiet being : and unless I now 

 Confound my present feelings with the past, 

 Even then, when from the bower I turn VI away 

 Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings. 

 I felt a sense of jjain when I behold 

 The silent trees and the intruding sky." 



Mr. T. Hudson Turner quotes a M.S., written apparently by Sir Walter 

 de Henlee, " chevalier," in the early part of the fourteenth century, which 

 states that one quarter of nuts ought to yield four gallons of oil ; but the 

 particular sort of nut is not specified. But though the Hazel may have been 

 early cultivated here, the tree is undoubtedly indigenous, and the nuts are 

 often found in the bogs of this kingdom. Mr. Hugh Miller describes some 

 of the bogs about Cromarty, thickset with silvery willows, while they are 

 full of the remains of enormous oaks and elms, now black as the coal itself. 

 Here, this writer tells us, he found handfuls of Hazel-nuts of the ordinary 

 size, but black as jet, with the cups of acorns and twigs of birch — the latter 

 still retaining almost unchanged its silvery crust, while its woody interior 

 had become a mere pulp. " I have even," he says, "laid open in layers of a 

 sort of unctuous clay, resembling fuller's-earth, leaves of oak, birch and 

 Hazel, which had fluttered in the winds thousands of years before." 



We have begun our account of the Hazel with that of its nut, for this 

 has peculiar claims on our notice, because it is one of the few British fruits 

 which are really worth eating : — sloes, blackberries, service-berries, wild 

 cherries, and crab-apples being pleasing only to childhood's taste, though 

 wild raspberries and strawberries are sweeter even than cultivated ones. 



