102 SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



Chestnuts are mostly grafted, when cultivated for the 

 sake of their fruit. There is a passage on this subject 

 in Virgil, which has occasioned much dispute among the 

 learned : 



" Et steriles platani inalos gessere valentes ; 

 Castaneje fagus, ornusque incanuit albo 

 f lore piri." Georg> iL 



Some suppose this passage to signify that the beech 

 has been grafted on the Chestnut : others considering it 

 an absurdity to graft a tree upon one of superior value, 

 read it differently, and believe it to mean, that the 

 Chestnut was grafted on the beech. Upon which Mar- 

 ty n observes, that he sees no reason to reject the first, 

 which is the common reading, since the fruit of the 

 Chestnut-tree was very little esteemed in Virgil's time. 

 Pliny wonders that nature should take such care of them 

 as to defend them with a prickly husk, whereas the mast 

 of the beech was reckoned a sweet nut ; and men are said 

 to have been sustained by it on a siege. The tree itself, 

 too, was held in high veneration, and vessels made of it 

 were used in the Roman sacrifices*. 



In another passage the Roman poet alludes to its lofty 

 growth. In speaking of the different manner in which 

 trees are raised, he says 



" Pars an t cm posito surgunt de semine : ut altae 

 Castanese, nemorumque Jovi quse maxima frontlet 

 -Esculus " 



Georgic ii. 



" Some are produced by seeds ; as the lofty chestnuts, and the 

 csculus, which has the largest leaves of all the groves of Jupiter." 



MARTYN'S Translation. 



* Sec Martyn's Virgil. 



