NUTS COS-NUTS AND FILBERTS. 3 i 



autumn is the best time to plant. Allow a distance of 30 feet, or in good soil 40 feet 

 between the trees. 



Pruning. After the heads are duly shaped in their earlier stages, pruning should be 

 limited to preventing the branches crossing each other, and cutting out irregularities to 

 secure an evenly balanced head. The difficulty to contend with is the richness of our 

 soil, which tends to more growth than becomes properly matured for the production of 

 fruit. This grossness can only be arrested by chopping through some of the roots with 

 a sharp spade or mattock. The fruit is produced on the young wood of the current year, 

 near to the summit of the previous year's well-ripened growths ; therefore to foreshorten 

 these is to prevent the crop. 



Gathering and Storing. If the nuts are gathered from the trees when immature, as 

 they sometimes are, they are light and poor in quality ; hence it is better to allow them 

 to fall. Any that remain in the husks should be taken out, and all thoroughly dried in the 

 sun or in an airy room. When thoroughly dried, those not wanted for immediate use 

 may be stored in air-tight jars, or packed in alternate layers with dry sand, and kept free 

 from damp and frost until required for use. They are very excitable, and a very little 

 moisture with warmth will bring on germination. The best-kept chestnuts we have seen 

 were found a foot deep in gravel. They were stored there by squirrels, and the nuts 

 were also the best flavoured of any that were tasted at Christmas. 



COB-NUTS AND FILBERTS. 



THE Common Hazel (Corylus Avellana) is indigenous in various parts of Europe, 

 North Africa, and temperate Asia. It is found wild in every part of Britain, in forests and 

 commons, on the banks of dingles and ravines, and in the mountainous parts. Several 

 places take their names from hazel (Saxon, hcesal a headdress), as Haslemere, in Surrey. 

 The specific name, Avellana, has reference to the nut largely and successfully cultivated at 

 Avellino in Italy, and it is probable that the Barcelona nuts of Spain are the produce of 

 descendants of the trees that flourished and became famous at ancient Avellino. Be that 

 as it may, our cob is synonymous with the Barcelona nut the husk shorter than the nut. 



The Filbert is supposed to be a native of Asia, introduced by the Eomans into Italy, 

 and thence to the rest of Europe. Yet the cob-nuts and the filberts are considered 

 merely varieties of the common hazel, and have been produced by superior soil, climate, 

 and culture. The cob-nut is round, the filbert long, and trees raised from seed 

 adhere to the type. The word filbert is a corruption of the original English name for 



