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fruit, as I learn from the country people, whilst in other years the 

 nuts do not fill in the shell. Climate, however, would seem not to 

 be the cause of failure in the fruit of the chestnut in this part of Eng- 

 land, since even that of the beech is apt to be abortive in a similar 

 manner, becoming as it were atrophied by absorption, the nuts ap- 

 pearing to the eye as large and well filled as usual, but on being 

 broken are found to be hollow, with no trace of any part of the seed 

 visible excepting the hairy funiculus. The practice of planting 

 young chestnuts in the copses, amongst the brushwood, is so frequent 

 with us on account of the value of the wood of a few years' growth for 

 hop poles, that it is next to impossible to say where this tree is of 

 spontaneous origin : I am inclined to believe that the few old chest- 

 nuts that are to be found scattered here and there in our woods and 

 hill-side copses may be of Nature's planting, in so far as they were 

 seedlings from trees originally introduced. I have found the chest- 

 nut apparently wild in this sporadic condition near Petersfield and 

 elsewhere, both here and on the mainland, but have never remarked 

 it in any considerable numbers where I could persuade myself that it 

 was not introduced by human agency. Compared with the beech its 

 power of occupancy with us is very feeble, which is not the case in 

 those countries where the chestnut is truly indigenous, as few trees 

 are more gregarious than both this and the beech where the climate 

 and soil are suitable; witness the vast chestnut groves that clothe the 

 lower mountain ranges in the south of Europe. Mr. Watson (Cyb. 

 Brit. ii. p. 377) very justly remarks that the chestnut " does not spon- 

 taneously spread and multiply so as to obtain a hold over the wastes 

 and neglected places, after the manner in which we see the Quercus 

 or the Pinus establish itself without human agency, or even in defi- 

 ance of human processes which oppose and impede the natural ten- 

 dency to spontaneous increase." True it is, that such power of 

 occupancy is not in all cases needed to prove a tree indigenous, as 

 some species are in their nature sporadic, and enter but sparingly 

 into the general constituents of the forest, as Pyrus torminalis, Ulmus 

 montana, Prunus avium, &c. Neither is the tendency to spread and 

 multiply abroad and take possession of the waste places of the 

 earth confined to such trees as are aboriginal to the soil they usurp, 

 a notable instance of which I shall soon have to bring before the rea- 

 der ere dismissing the Dicotyledonous plants of the county. But we 

 may well expect to see trees that are naturally gregarious equally so- 

 cial, or nearly so, in all climates fitted for their spontaneous growth, 

 and unless we find them obviously multiplying by seed and maintain- 



