240 THE HAZEL. 



on the young shoots, was roasted on a spit made of Hazel- 

 wood. The Hazel grows wild in all the temperate climates 

 of Europe and Asia, and is found in England at an eleva- 

 tion of 1,600 feet. 



Evelyn derives his family name from this tree ; he says : 

 " I do not confound the Filbert, Pontic, or Filbord, dis- 

 tinguished by its beard, with our foresters or bald Hazel- 

 nuts, which doubtless we had froin abroad, and bearing 

 the names of Avelan, Avelin, as I found in some ancient 

 records and deeds in my custody, where my ancestors' 

 names were written Avelan, alias Evelyn, generally." He 

 also mentions several places which received their names 

 from the abundance of these trees growing near them. 

 " For the place," he says, " they all affect cold, barren, 

 dry, and sandy grounds ; mountains, and even rocky soils, 

 produce them ; they prosper where quarries of freestone 

 lie underneath, as at Hasellwry in Wilts, Haselingfield in 

 Cambridgeshire, Haslemere in Surrey, and other places; 

 but more plentifully, if the ground be somewhat moist, 

 dankish and mossy, as in the fresher hollows and sides of 

 hills, hoults, and in hedge-rows." In the legendary history 

 of the early English Church the Hazel stands beside the 

 Whitethorn. 1 " The most signal honour it was ever em- 

 ployed in, and which might deservedly exalt this humble 

 and common plant above all the trees of the wood, is that of 

 hurdles, especially the flexible white, the red, the brittle ; 

 not for that it is generally used for the folding of our 

 innocent sheep, an emblem of the Church, but for making 

 the walls of one of the first Christian oratories in the 

 world, and particularly in this island, that venerable and 

 sacred fabrick at Glastonbury, founded by St. Joseph of 

 Arimathea, which is storied to have been first composed but 

 of a few small Hazel- rods interwoven about certain stakes 

 driven into the ground ; and walls of this kind, instead of 

 ]aths and punchions, superintended with a coarse mortar 



1 See p. 84. 



