EUROPEAN TREES. Bom 
larger, and is an important article of diet among the French 
and Italian peasantry. The walnut of Europe, though not 
equal to some of the American species in beauty of growth or 
of wood, or to others in strength and elasticity of fibre, is valua- 
ble for its timber and its oil.* The maritine pine, which has 
proved of such immense use in fixing drifting sands in France, 
* The walnut is a more valuable tree than is generally supposed. It yields 
one-third of the oil produced in France, and in this respect occupies an inter- 
mediate position between the olive of the south and the oleaginous seeds of 
the north. A hectare (about two and a half acres) will produce nuts to the 
value of five hundred francesa year, which cost nothing but the gathering. 
Unfortunately, its maturity must be long waited for, and more nut-trees are 
felled than planted. The demand for its wood in cabinet-work is the princi- 
pal cause of its destruction. See LAVERGNE, Economie Rurale de la France, 
p. 203. 
According to Cosimo Ridolfi (Lezioni Orali, ii., p. 424), France obtains three 
times as much oil from the walnut as from the olive, and nearly as much as 
from all oleaginous seeds together. He states that the walnut bears nuts at 
the age of twenty years, and yields its maximum product at seventy,and that a 
hectare of ground, with thirty trees, or twelve to the acre, is equal to a capital 
of twenty-five hundred francs. 
The nut of this tree is known in the United States as the ‘‘ English walnut.” 
The finit and the wood much resemble those of the American black walnut, 
Juglans nigra, but for cabinet-work the American is the more beautiful 
material, especially when the large knots are employed. The timber of the 
European species, when straight-grained, and clear, or free from Imots, is, for 
ordinary purposes, better than that of the American black walnut, but bears 
no comparison with the wood of the hickory, when strength combined with 
elasticity is required, and its nut is very inferior in taste to that of the shag- 
bark, as well as to the butternut, which it somewhat resembles. . 
‘‘ The chestnut is more valuable still, for it produces on a sterile soil, which, 
without it, would yield only ferns and heaths, an abundant nutriment for 
man.”—LAVERGNE, Economie Rurale dela France, p. 253. 
I believe the varieties developed by cultivation are less numerous in the 
walnut than in the chestnut, which latter tree is often grafted in Southern 
Europe. 
The chestnut crop of France was estimated in 1848 at 3,478,000 hectolitres, 
or 9,877,520 Winchester bushels, and valued at 13,528,000 francs, or more than 
two million and a half dollars. In Tuscany the annual yield is computed at 
about 550,000 bushels. 
The Tuscan peasants think the flour of the dried chestnut not less nutritious 
than Indian cornmeal, and it sells at the same price, or about three cents per 
English pound, in the mountains, and four cents in the towns. 
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