164 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



seeds of its magnificent rival. The husks of the sweet chestnut arc like hedgehogs?, 

 while those of the horse-chestnut have scarcely any prickles. Moreover, the sweet 

 chestnut is usually flat on one side, and often upon two sides, owing to several nuts 

 having stood side hy side in the involucrum, and at the apex there arc seen the 

 withered styles and stigmas. The seeds of the horse-chestnut, on the other hand, 

 have a perfectly round and even surface, showing only a broad scar at the part where 

 they were attached to the inside of the capsule. 



GENUS HL—F A G U S. Toimief. 



IMale flowers in compact suholobular catkins, with very small 

 caducous catkin-scales: floral-scales combined into a cuplike peri- 

 anth (?) with 5 or 6 segments: stamens 8 to 12, inserted on a glan- 

 dular disk at the bottom of the perianth. Female flowers 2 to 3 together, 

 rarely solitary, surrounded by a common urceolate involucre, the 

 outside of which is furnished with numerous linear bracts imbricated 

 in many rows : perianth completely adherent to the ovary and produced 

 beyond it, the limb laciniate, with 5 to 8 segments: ovary with 3 cells; 

 ovules 2 in each cell ; styles 3, with the stigmas lateral, erect, but 

 slightly recurved at the apex. Nuts ovoid-triquetrous, 2, more rarel}'' 

 1 or 3, enclosed in a common coriaceous bristly-spiny ovoid involucre, 

 which opens by 4 valves; pericarp tough and leathery. Cotyledons 

 irre2:ularly folded, filling the seed, coherent, fleshy. 



Trees with long slender scaly buds and deciduous repand or serrate 

 leaves. Flowers monojcious, appearing with or shortly after the 

 leaves. 



The derivation of the name of this genus is from the Greek woi-d (jxtyEly (phagein), 

 to eat, because the nuts were used as food in the early ages. 



SPECIES I.-P AG US SYLVATICA. Lh>n. 

 Plate MCCXCI. 

 Reich. Ic. El. Germ, ct Helv. Vol. XII. Tab. DCXXIX. Eig. 1304. 



Leaves oval, obsoletely serrate, pilose on the petioles, veins, and 

 margins, especially when young. 



In woods and on chalky hills. Not uncommon, find doubtless 

 truly native in the south of England; probably not native in the 

 north and in Scotland. Not indiojenous in Ireland. 



England, [Scotland, Ireland]. Tree. Late Spring and early 



Summer. 



A large tree, growing to r)0 or 80 feet high, or even more, with 

 spreading flexuous branches and very smooth grey bark. Buds with 



