The Walnut. 263 



fail to attract the notice of the early cultivators of plants, 

 and in all likelihood it had reached Italy long before the 

 beginning of the Christian era. The Romans called it by 

 the name still allowed to this tree by science faglans, 

 literally "Jupiter's Nut," under which appellation there 

 are allusions to the fruit in their literature^ though the 

 usual terms are nux and mtces. Ovid has left us a 

 charming little poem, " Nux Elegia," " the Plaint of the 

 Walnut-tree," in which he represents it as protesting 

 against men's unkindness, being pelted with stones and 

 beaten with sticks, in return for the munificence with 

 which it bestows its milk-white produce. 



The introduction into Britain is almost certainly attri- 

 butable to the Romans, though the name it has always 

 borne in this country is Germanic, coming from the 

 Anglo-Saxon wealh-knut, literally " foreign-nut," i.e. the 

 exotic or beyond-seas nut, in comparison with the indige- 

 nous hazel. No exotic tree ever took more kindly to 

 British soil and the British climate. In the south it 

 occurs not only in pleasure-grounds and gardens, but by 

 the waysides, especially in retired villages. In the north 

 it is rather rare, and found chiefly near old halls. At 

 Mentmore, the palatial seat of the late Baron Mayer de 

 Rothschild, now of Lord Rosebery, there is a walnut 

 nearly seventy feet high, the girth, at four feet from the 

 ground, three yards, and the circumference of the spread 

 of the branches two hundred and seventy feet. One at 

 Downland House, Liphook, Hants, has a circumference 

 of spread exceeding three hundred feet. Very handsome 



