853 



refined speculative reasoning (to be always admitted with caution 

 when opposed to the evidences which nature presents), I may remark 

 that probability is very greatly against the chestnut being indigenous 

 to any part of Europe north of the Alps, or (with perhaps some par- 

 tial inflections) beyond 44 or 45 degrees of latitude. It is wanting 

 over the greater part of Germany, and only occurs in a cultivated con- 

 dition in Hungary, Lower Austria and the Tyrol. It is unknown in 

 Russia proper, and first appears in the conquered Caucasian provinces 

 of that empire according to Pallas and M. von Bieberstein. Koch 

 says of it (Syn. Fl. Germ, et Helv. 2nd edit. p. 736), " Colitur, et in 

 regionibus calidioribus sylvas format sola cultura ortas." Such I 

 have little doubt was the origin of the chestnut woods that formerly 

 existed in the south of England, as the gigantic trees of this species 

 still in being prove it to have been introduced at a very early period 

 into Britain. Turner, writing in 1568, says, " Chestnut trees grow 

 plentuously in Kent abroad in the fieldes and in manye gardins in 

 England," (Herb. p. 114). Gerarde still later affirms, "There be sun- 

 dry woods of Chestnuts in England, as a mile and a half from Feur- 

 sham in Kent, and in sundry other places." I believe these old woods 

 are now destroyed, but the tree is abundantly cultivated in the present 

 day for hop-poles, a use it could not have been put to in Turner's 

 time, since hops were not then grown in England, as we have seen 

 under that plant. In America the beech and the chestnut flourish to- 

 gether at the sea level ; I found them so growing in Canada West as 

 far north as the parallel of Niagara or lat. 43° 27', where it is still 

 very common in the woods.* Tn the south of Europe below the li- 

 mits assigned as the true natural boundary of the chestnut, this and 

 the beech inhabit zones of different elevation, and are seldom, if ever, 

 seen associated, though both very gregarious by nature, showing 

 clearly that a different climate and temperature is required for each. 

 Now since the beech finds, even in the south of England, a climate 



* The American beech, F. femiginea, although long regarded as a variety of the 

 European F. sylvatica, is unquestionably a most distinct species, and much the hand- 

 somer tree of the two, the leaves greatly larger, distinctly serrated, and so nearly ap- 

 proaching those of the chestnut as in very young trees to be scarcely distinguishable 

 from them at first sight. F. ferruginea grows wild sporadically in the low country of 

 Carolina and Georgia. I have seen it in the forests near Savannah in company with 

 Magnolia grandiflora, Gordonia lesianthus and Palmettos under a mean temperature 

 of 66 Fah. and 32 degrees of latitude. In the south of Europe F. sylvatica is never 

 found spontaneous at the sea level or descending on the mountains into or below the 

 region of the chestnut. 



