CHAP, CV. CORYLA‘CEA. CASTA‘NEA. 1989 
who wrote some years afterwards, says, “ In divers places of Kent, as in and 
about Gravesend, in the countrey, and elsewhere, very many prime timbers of 
their old barns and houses are of chestnut wood; and yet there is now scarce 
a chestnut tree within 20 miles of the place, and the people altogether ignorant 
of such trees. This sheweth that in former times those places did abound 
with such timber.” (Legacy, &c., p.18.) A proof how early the idea pre- 
vailed of the’ wood of Quercus sessiliflora being that of the chestnut. In 
the year 1676, an ancestor of the family of Wyndham of Felbrigg, in Nor- 
folk, was said to be a great planter of chestnuts; and some account of his 
trees will be found in a succeeding page. The tree, however, was compara- 
tively neglected, till towards the latter end of the last century; when the 
Society of Arts, reviving the idea (which, as we have seen above, was cur- 
rent as long ago as the time of Henry VIII.), that the carpentry of many of 
our old buildings consisted of chestnut wood, offered rewards for planting the 
tree; and these were given to a number of individuals who made plantations 
of it. The tree is now chiefly planted as coppice-wood and for its fruit in 
England, and as an ornamental tree in Scotland and Ireland. In England, it 
is chiefly planted in hop countries, and on the margins of orchards, as a fruit 
tree. There are considerable plantations of it in Devonshire, from which large 
quantities of fruit are sent to the London market. 
In France, as in Britain, it was formerly believed that the timber in the 
roofs of the oldest cathedrals, and in the Louvre and other buildings, was of 
chestnut ; and it was thought, in consequence, that the tree had, in former 
times, been much more abundant in France than it now is in that country. 
Buffon, however, demonstrated that oak wood, after a great number of years, 
puts on the appearance of that of the chestnut; and, afterwards, Daubenton, 
as we have seen (p. 1787.), set the question at rest, by showing that what had 
been taken for chestnut was Q. sessiliflora. At the same time, it is observed 
in the Dictionnaire des Eaux et Foréts, that chestnut trees must formerly have 
been much more common in France than at present ; because orchards of 
them are often referred to under the name of chataigneraies in ancient writings ; 
and Acosta reports that the groves of chestnut trees in France were almost 
totally destroyed in 1709, by a very severe frost, which followed suddenly after 
heavy rains. In the Dictionnaire Universe! (published at Lyons in 1791, art. 
Chataignier), it is stated, from the records of the city of Orleans, that “ the 
Forest of Orleans has been observed to change alternately the species of its 
timber ; to have been for a space of time in oak, then in chestnut, and after- 
GN 4 
