TIMBER TREES. 37 



journey to see. The leaves are large, with seven 

 lobes cut down to the base, or leaflets spreading like 

 the ringers, at the end of long foot-stalks. This is not 

 a native tree, but is acclimatized and bears the 

 climate well, growing rapidly, and soon attaining a 

 very large size. 



The fruits are well known, especially to children, 

 but they are unwholesome and dangerous. In France 

 starch has been manufactured by washing from the 

 rasped horse-chestnuts, which, like all other starch, is 

 quite edible, though of little or no use as an article of 

 diet. 



In Lincolnshire is a tree said to be the largest in 

 Britain, with immense branches extending over a 

 space of three hundred and five feet in circum- 

 ference; the branches are so large as to require 

 props, so that at a little distance it looks like an 

 Indian banyan tree. At Coombe Abbey, in Warwick- 

 shire, a tree little more than one hundred years 

 old has a trunk seven feet three inches in diameter. 



According to M. Sainte-Hilaire the horse-chestnut 

 was brought from the mountains of Thibet to Eng- 

 land in 1550, and was afterwards taken to Vienna by 

 Clusius, and thence to Paris. The earliest notice of 

 it in England is in Gerard's Herbal, where, in 1579, 

 he speaks of it as a rare foreign tree. From Vienna 

 this tree also found its way into Germany, and was 

 introduced into Baden towards the close of the six- 

 teenth century. It is now generally cultivated in 

 Europe and North America, 



The LiME 1 is a favourite tree for park avenues, and 



1 Tilia Eitropaa. 



