334 DECIDUOUS TREES. 



The above observations concerning the European sweet chest- 

 nut, though in the main appHcable to our own chestnut, are not 

 entirely so ; for we have seen some of the largest trees of the 

 species in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, in soils which, if not 

 alluvial, were at least of a character to bear grain. Still, these soils 

 may be composed in part of the debris of the very rocks which the 

 close observer above quoted has mentioned as essential to the 

 growth of the tree. Michaux found the finest chestnut trees of 

 the United States on the mountain slopes of the Carolinas. 



The chestnut is remarkable for its longevity and the immense 

 size its trunk attains. On the Blight place in Germantown, near 

 Philadelphia, are some grand specimens. One old trunk, the top 

 of which is a ruin, is nine feet in diameter, with a horizontal 

 branch, at six feet from the ground, three feet in diameter ! The 

 "elephant chestnut" of the Hartshorn forest, Neversink Highlands, 

 New York harbor, is a grand specimen, said to be five hundred 

 years old. In the grounds of Moses Brown, School Lane, Ger- 

 mantown, Pa., is an immense chestnut, formed of three trunks, 

 grown into one at the base, which measures nearly ten feet in 

 diameter one way, and upwards of five feet the other. Its height 

 is about ninety feet, and its branches cover an area nearly one 

 hundred feet in diameter , yet Mr. Brown informed us that the 

 tree is probably not more than one hundred years old ! At New- 

 ton Centre, Mass., on the Rice estate, is one of the grandest 

 chestnuts in New England ; height nearly eighty feet, spread of 

 limbs ninety-three feet, and girth of trunk at the base twenty-five 

 feet. 



But the greatest of our American chestnuts are small in trunk 

 compared with some of the famous old specimens of the same 

 species in Europe and Asia. In England there are larger trees 

 than our own, notwithstanding the nuts do not ripen so well there. 

 The Studley Park chestnut, twenty-one years ago, was one hun- 

 dred and twelve feet high, seven and a half feet in diameter of 

 trunk, and ninety-one and a half feet across its branches ; and at 

 Croft Castle, in Herefordshire, there is one eighty feet high, one 

 hundred and twelve feet across its branches, and eight and a half 

 feet diameter of trunk. The trunks of chestnut trees continue to 



