260 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. 



When dry it is boiled, or steamed, or roasted, according 

 to taste and desire, or ground into a kind of flour, of 

 which puddings are made, and an excellent description 

 of bread. A portion of the stock is kiln-dried, so as to 

 be kept in reserve in case of scarcity. Analysis of the 

 Italian chestnut-cakes, called need, shows them to contain 

 no less than 40 per cent, of nutritious matters soluble 

 in cold water, a circumstance which seems to recom- 

 mend chestnut-flour, properly prepared, as a very eligible 

 children's food. A very nice way to dress chestnuts is 

 to boil them for twenty minutes, and then place them for 

 five minutes more in a Dutch-oven, 



Our market supplies are drawn from Spain, Italy, and 

 France, this to the extent of many thousands of tons 

 annually. The earliest to appear are usually English, 

 but in England this fruit ripens well and plentifully only 

 when the summer is exceptionally warm. 



Edible nuts are yielded also by the Castanea chryso- 

 phylla, from the Pacific coast of North America. Apart 

 from its value as a fruit-tree, no plant of recent introduc- 

 tion is more desirable for ornamental purposes, especially 

 for isolation upon the lawn. The leaves, four or five 

 inches long, are covered on the under-surface with golden- 

 yellow powder, reminding one of the " golden ferns " of 

 the hothouse-fernery, thus presenting a combination of 

 colours rarely seen in tree-foliage, and singularly effective 

 when the boughs are swayed by the wind. The chryso- 

 phylla has the great merit, also, of being evergreen. In 

 California it is often only a bush, but it can attain, as 



