38 TREE-PLANTING. 



The horse chestnut sometimes attains to a con- 

 siderable size. One tree in Lincolnshire is sixty feet 

 high, possessing a circumference of foliage which 

 measures a hundred yards. 



The timber is comparatively worthless, except for 

 those purposes where wood is required that is easily 

 worked, a cubical foot of chestnut timber weighing 

 when dry only from thirty-five to thirty-seven pounds. 

 The nuts, which are bitter, are refused by pigs, and 

 all other animals excepting the deer, which eat them. 



In France I believe they make starch from the 

 nuts, but to the best of my knowledge they are not 

 put to any useful purpose in England. 



The Scarlet-Flowering Chestnut is a handsome tree 

 for decorative purposes, of a more dwarf habit, which 

 flowers at an earlier age than the common horse 

 chestnut, which causes it to be in request on that 

 account. There are also some interesting varieties of 

 the yellow-flowering and smooth-fruited kinds, which 

 are of dwarf growth, of the genus termed Pavia. 

 These are best propagated by being engrafted on the 

 common horse chestnut, a profusion of stocks for 

 such a purpose being always readily accessible. 



The trees I have enumerated will all thrive and 

 succeed well in moist situations, the same as I have 

 described ; each and all being very easy to deal with 

 in their method of cultivation ; success invariably re- 

 warding only a very moderate amount of painstaking; 

 in fact, in some cases, as the willow, by merely sticking 

 a small piece of cutting into the ground in a moist 

 situation, in the neighbourhood of water, in course of 

 time a handsome tree will be found in its place. 



