1988 ARBORETUM AND FRU'TICETUM. PART III. 
from the rain. (Houel, Voyage en Sicile, tom. ii. p. 79.) The author adds, 
however, that the Spanish queen’s visit is somewhat apocryphal. The tree 
itself, when visited by M. Houel, was in a state of decay: it had lost the 
greater part of its branches, and its trunk was quite hollow. A house was 
erected in the interior, with some country people living init, with an oven, in 
which, according to the custom of the country, they dried chestnuts, filberts, 
and other fruits, which they wished to preserve for winter use ; using as fuel, 
when they could find no other, pieces cut with a hatchet from the interior of 
the tree. In Brydone’s time, in 1770, this tree measured 204 ft. in circum- 
ference. He says that it had the appearance of five distinct trees; but that he 
was assured that the space was once filled with solid timber, and that there 
was no bark in the inside. This circumstance of an old trunk, hollow in the 
interior, becoming separated, so as to have the appearance of being the 
remains of several distinct trees, is frequently met with in the case of very old 
mulberry trees in Britain, and olive trees in Italy. Kircher, about a century 
before Brydone, affirms that an entire flock of sheep might be enclosed within 
the Etna chestnut as in a fold. The sweet chestnut was, in all probability, 
introduced into Britain in the time of the Romans, for the sake of its fruit ; 
and, being a tree of great duration, and ripening its fruit, it could hardly 
fail to become a permanent inhabitant. The old chestnut tree at Tortworth 
(fig. 1924., to a scale of lin. to 12 ft.) may, indeed, possibly have been one 
of those planted by the Romans. The oldest chestnut tree in the neigh- 
bourhood of London is that at Cobham, in Kent, of which jg. 1925. is a 
portrait, to a scale of lin. to 12 ft. Cambden mentions that Cowdray Park, 
in Sussex, was famous in his time for its chestnut trees; and the town of 
Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, is supposed to have derived its name from the 
number of chestnut trees that formerly grew there. Old Tusser, in 1562, 
enumerates chestnuts, in his list of fruit trees which may be transplanted in 
January; and Lord Bacon mentions the chestnut in his Hssay on Plantations. 
The tree, however, if once plentiful, appears soon to have become compara- 
tive scarcely; for the author of a tract entitled An old Thrift newly revived, 
published in 1612, recommends planting the chestnut as a “kind of timber 
tree of which few grow in England;” and which, he adds, will not only pro- 
duce “large and excellent good timber,” but “ good fruit, that poore people, 
in time of dearth, may, with a small quantitie of oats or barley, make bread of.” 
He also says that a chestnut tree, “when you begin first to plant it, will grow 
more in one yeare, than an oake will doe intwo.” (p.7.) Mr. Samuel Hartlib, 
