THE HAZEL. 



"Now let us sit beneath the grateful shade 

 Which Hazels interlaced with elms have made." 



Virgil, Eclogue V. 



THE Hazel, under which Menalcas invites his brother- 

 shepherd to sit, is a tree of considerable size, while the 

 American hazels are mere shrubs, seldom overtopping a 

 rustic stone-wall. The Hazel among the Romans, like 

 the olive among the Jews, was regarded as the emblem 

 of peace ; and this estimation of it was transmitted to the 

 people of a later period. Hence, in popular works of 

 fancy on the language of flowers, this is recorded as its 

 symbolic meaning ; and in ancient times a Hazel rod was 

 supposed to have power of reconciling friends who had 

 been separated by disagreement. These superstitions con- 

 nected with the Hazel, and more particularly the one 

 relating to the Hazel rod, named the Caduceus, assigned 

 by the gods to Mercury as a means of restoring harmony 

 to the human race, probably gave origin to the divining- 

 rod, which was first made of Hazel and afterwards of the 

 witch-elm. It is remarkable that in America this use 

 was made of the hamamelis, a very different plant in its 

 botanical characters, and hence called the Witch-Hazel. 



There are two New England species, both delighting in 

 the shelter of rude fences, and producing their flowers be- 

 fore their leaves. They are distinguished chiefly by the 

 shape of their fruit. The common Hazel is the one most 

 generally known. In this the shells or husks that enclose 

 the nuts are of the same round shape, growing in a clus- 



