66 The greater summer-leafing trees 



shifting sandbanks along the Rhone, Danube, and other 

 rivers. 



The Chestnut. Among the noblest trees of the Northern 

 Forest for its beauty and dignity even in our cold north, 

 for use as food for various peoples, and for its wood. 

 It is a tree of the sandy and granitic hills of central and 

 southern Europe, the Caucasus, and North Africa, living 

 to a great age and often, even in our own country, 

 reaching great size and beauty, as on the terrace at 

 Shrubland and many other places. It does best in free 

 warm loams or sandy soils, and, like most of the other 

 forest trees, it grows much straighter timber when close 

 together than when isolated as it is so often in our 

 country ; its effect is good, however, in either case, and 

 old single trees are often beautiful. Its slighter wood 

 is the best of all for poles, fencing, and trellis-work ; 

 even young growths split up are very enduring, and 

 hence the common use of the tree in France, especially 

 about old houses, for trellis-work against walls. The 

 mean and ugly modern way of wiring a wall with 

 galvanized wire is not so good as the old fashion of 

 trellising with split Chestnut, often common as under- 

 wood in the very places where the wire is used. In 

 forming a pergola, if we make our pillars of brick or 

 Oak, and our main timbers of Oak or Larch, it is the 

 best wood to form the smaller divisions, b}' which we 

 mean rent Chestnut made from underwood growth. 

 Chestnut wood is best when cut in the young and 

 growing state, as old trees are apt to become shaky. 



Fine as the tree is in parts of our own country, it 

 does not attain to its greatest size on the northern side 

 of the Alps ; not till we have passed the mountain chain 

 which separates Italy and Greece from central Europe 



