282 OTJK COMMON FRUITS. 



vale of Tempe; Mount Olympus, too, being at one time 

 nearly covered by it. It was familiar to the Romans, 

 among whom the nuts were made into bread for the poor, 

 but nevertheless seems to have been but little esteemed, 

 if we may judge by the very uncomplimentary remark 

 made upon it by Pliny, who, speaking of the multiplied 

 coverings, observes, " It is really surprising that Nature 

 should have taken such pains to conceal an object of so 

 little value ; " but perhaps the opinion had not arisen 

 in his time which was entertained afterwards as to this 

 bread being a diet which tended to improve the com- 

 plexion. In our own country the fruit appears to have 

 been formerly much more largely employed than at the 

 present day, or, at least, in more various ways : one use 

 is recorded by Ben Jonson, when he alludes to "the 

 chestnut which hath larded many a swine ; " and Evelyn 

 speaks of their being made into fritters, pies, and stews, 

 which he calls "the very best use for them; " but our 

 modern cookery-books contain no information respecting 

 such preparations. The finest we get come from Spain, 

 where they are the common food of the peasantry, and 

 where, too, a special sanctity. attaches to them, for in Ca- 

 talonia the people go from house to house on All Saints' 

 Eve to partake of them, believing that for every chestnut 

 they eat in a different house at that festival they will free 

 a soul from Purgatory. But it is in the S. of Prance and 

 in the JST. of Italy that they are of most importance as an 

 article of consumption, for here they are the principal food 

 of the lower classes. Professor Simmonds informs us that 

 about 2,000,000 hectolitres are annually consumed in 

 Prance, a portion of the rural population in some of the 

 departments living entirely upon them for half the year. 

 They undergo the preparation of being unhusked, dried 

 with smoke, ground into flour, and then mixed with milk, 

 and made into "gaieties" a kind of pancake baked on 

 an iron plate ; or into "polenta" a species of porridge. 

 When thoroughly dried for two or three days on the 

 floor of a kind of kiln, pierced with holes, having a 

 smouldering fire beneath fed with their own husks, they 

 will keep good for several years, and this is the process 



