1996 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICE'TUM. PART III. 
French cooks always slit the skin of all except one; and, when that cracks and 
flies off, they know that the rest are done. Chestnut flour is kept in casks, 
or in earthen bottles well corked; and it will remain good for years. La galette 
is a species of thick flat cake, which is made without yeast, and baked on a 
kind of girdle, or iron plate, or on a hot flat stone. It is generally mixed with 
milk and a little salt, and is sometimes made richer by the addition of eggs and 
butter ; and sometimes, when baked, it is covered with a rich custard before 
serving. La polenta is made by boiling the chestnut flour in water or milk, 
and continually stirring it, till it has become quite thick, and will no longer stick 
to the fingers. When made with water, it is frequently eaten with milk, in the 
manner that oatmeal porridge is in Scotland. Besides these modes of dressing 
chestnuts, which are common in Italy as well as in France, many others might 
be mentioned; particularly a kind of douilli, called chatigna, which is made 
by boiling the entire chestnuts, after they have been dried and freed from 
their skins, in water with a little salt, till they become soft, and then breaking 
and mixing them together like mashed potatoes; and a sweetmeat, called 
marrons glacés, which is made by dipping the marrons into clarified sugar, and 
then drying them, and which is common in the confectioners’ shops in Paris. 
(See Parmentier’s T'raité de la Chétaigne ; Mém. de Desmarets in Journ, de 
Physique for 1771and 1772; Du Ham, Arb., i. p. 136.; N. Du Ham. iii. p. 65. ; 
Dict. Class., &c., art. Chataignier ; Nouv. Cours, &c.) On the foreign modes 
of dressing chestnuts in Evelyn’s time, that author says, “ The best tables 
in France and Italy make them a service, eating them with salt, in wine, 
or juice of lemon and sugar, being first roasted in embers on the chaplet. 
In Italy, they boil them in wine, and then smoke them a little. These 
they call anseri, or geese: I know not why. Those of Piedmont add fennel, 
cinnamon, and nutmeg to their wine; but first they peel them. Others mace- 
rate them in rose-water. The bread of the flour is exceedingly nutritive: 
it is a robust food, and makes women well-complexioned, as I have read in a 
good author. They also make fritters of chestnut flour, which they wet with 
rose-water, and sprinkle with grated parmigans, and so fry them in fresh 
butter for a delicate.” (Hunt. Evel., i. p.162.) Evelyn also says that “ the 
flour of chestnuts made into an electuary with honey, and eaten fasting, is an 
approved remedy against spitting of blood and the cough; and a decoction of 
the rind of the tree tinctures hair of a golden colour, esteemed a beauty in 
some countries.” (Zdid., p.163.) Sugar is said to have been obtained in. 
France from chestnuts by the same process as is used for the extraction of 
the sugar from beet, and at the rate of 14 per cent; which is more than the 
average produce of the beet-root. (Bon Sens, as quoted in the Atheneum of 
Feb. 25. 1837.) 
As a Tree for useful Plantations, the chestnut is chiefly valuable as under- 
wood, and for its fruit. As underwood, as already mentioned, it is grown, in 
England, for hop-poles, fence-wood, and hoops. The poles last as long as 
those of the ash, and longer; but they do not grow so fast, and they are apt 
to send out stout side shoots, which, if not checked, either by pruning or by 
the closeness of the plantation, cause, Cobbett observes, “‘ the upper part of the 
pole to diminish in size too rapidly. To get a chestnut pole any where between 
12 ft. and 20ft. in length, there will also be a disproportionate but; a dis- 
advantage that none but skilful hop-planters can know. The vines of the hop 
(and it is the same with all other climbing plants) do not like to have a big 
thing to go round at starting.” (Woodlands.) Hence intelligent hop-planters, 
“in order to obviate the injury arising from large-butted poles, stick in little 
rods as leaders, to conduct the vine to the pole at 2 ft. or 3 ft. from the ground. 
(Ibid.) For this reason, the plants, in a plantation of chestnuts for under- 
growth, ought not to be farther apart than 5 ft. every way; in which case they 
will require very little pruning, but will become drawn up of a proper size. 
When the tree is planted for timber, its properties suggest the propriety of 
cutting it down when the trunk is under 1 ft. in diameter, and for using it 
chiefly in rustic structures, gate-posts, and fencing. As a fruit tree, we have _ 
