2024 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART ITI. 
consideted excellent for gunpowder ; 
it is also used for making crayons 
for drawing, being, for that purpose, 
charred’ in closed iron tubes. The 
principal use of the hazel in England, 
at the present time, is as a fruit tree ; 
and a great quantity of the nuts, both 
of the wild and cultivated kinds, are 
sold in the English markets. “ Be- 
sides those ‘raised at home,” says 
M‘Culloch, * we import nuts from 
different parts of France, Portugal, 
and Spain, but principally from the 
latter. The Spanish nuts in the 
highest estimation, though sold under 
the name of Barcelona nuts, are not 
really shipped at that city, but at 
Tarragona, a little more to the south. 
Mr. Inglis says that the annual average 
export of nuts from Tarragona is 
from 25,000 to 30,000 bags, of four 
bags to the ton. The cost was, free 
on board, in autumn, 1830, 17s. 6d. a 
bag. (Spain in 1830, vol. ii. p. 362.) 
The entries of nuts for home con- 
sumption amount to from 100,000 to 
125,000 bushels a year; the duty of 
2s. a bushel producing from 10,0002. 
to 12,5501. clear.” (Dict. of Com., 
p. 853.) Mr. M‘Culloch adds, “ The 
kernels have a mild, farinaceous, oily —=G 
taste, agreeable to most palates. A ~ 
kind of chocolate has been prepared es 
from them ; and they have been sometimes made into bread. The expressed 
oil of hazel nuts is little inferior to that of almonds.” Evelyn tells us that hazel 
nuts, though considered unwholesome to those who were asthmatic, were, in 
his “ time, thought to be fattening ; and, when full ripe, the filberts especially, 
if peeled in warm water, as they blanch almonds, make a pudding very little, if 
at all, inferior to what our ladies make of almonds.” (vol.i. p. 217.) The oil 
made from hazel nuts, which is usually called nut oil, is best made in the 
middle of winter ; as, if made sooner, the nut yields less oil; and, if later, it is 
apt to become rancid. It is extracted in the same manner as the walnut oil. 
(See p. 1429.). It is never made in England, and but rarely in France. 
As an ornamental tree, the hazel, when trained to a single stem, forms a 
very handsome object for a lawn, near a winter’s residence; because it not 
only retains its leaves a long time in autumn, after they have assumed a rich 
yellow colour, but, as soon as they drop, they discover the nearly full-grown 
male catkins, which often come into full flower at the end of October, and 
vemain on the tree in that state throughout the winter; and, in days of bright 
sunshine in February and March, when slightly moved by the wind, they have 
a gay and most enlivening appearance. The length of time the leaves remain 
on the tree, and their rich yellow, render the hazel, as we have already ob- 
served (p. 2019.), one of the most ornamental of all deciduous shrubs as 
undergrowth; it ranking, in this respect, with the oak and the beech. The 
foliage of the birch and the willow, two of the commonest undergrowths in 
indigenous woods, is meagre, and drops off suddenly ; while the leaves of the 
ash and the chestnut drop off early, when they have scarcely changed colour ; 
and, hence, these trees, as undergrowths, are far inferior to the hazel in woods 
which form conspicuous features in the view from a mansion, or where orna- 
