1988 



ARBORETUM AND FKUT1CETUM. 



PART III. 



from the rain. (Houel, Voyage en Sidle, torn. ii. p. 79.) The author adds, 

 however, that the Spanish queen's visit is somewhat apocryphal. The tree 

 itself, when visited by M. Houel, was in a state of decay : it had lost the 

 greater part of its branches, and its trunk was quite hollow. A house was 

 erected in the interior, with some country people living in it, with an oven, in 

 which, according to the custom of the country, they dried chestnuts, filberts, 

 and other fruits, which they wished to preserve for winter use ; using as fuel, 

 when they could find no other, pieces cut with a hatchet from the interior of 

 the tree. In Brydone's time, in 1770, this tree measured 204ft. in circum- 

 ference. He says that it had the appearance of five distinct trees; but that he 

 was assured that the space was once filled with solid timber, and that there 

 was no bark in the inside. This circumstance of an old trunk, hollow in the 

 interior, becoming separated, so as to have the appearance of being the 

 remains of several distinct trees, is frequently met with in the case of very old 

 mulberry trees in Britain, and olive trees in Italy. Kircher, about a century 

 before Brydone, affirms that an entire flock of sheep might be enclosed within 

 the Etna chestnut as in a fold. The sweet chestnut was, in all probability, 

 introduced into Britain in the time of the Romans, for the sake of its fruit ; 

 and, being a tree of great duration, and ripening its fruit, it could hardly 

 fail to become a permanent inhabitant. The old chestnut tree at Tortworth 



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1924 







. 1924-., to a scale of 1 in. to 12 ft.) may, indeed, possibly have been one 

 of those planted by the Romans. The oldest chestnut tree in the neigh- 

 bourhood of London is that at Cobham, in Kent, of which fig. 1925. is a 

 portrait, to a scale of 1 in. to 12 ft. Cambden mentions that Cowdray Park, 

 in Sussex, was famous in his time for its chestnut trees ; and the town of 

 Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, is supposed to have derived its name from the 

 number of chestnut trees that formerly grew there. Old Tusser, in 1562, 

 enumerates chestnuts, in his list of fruit trees which may be transplanted in 

 January; and Lord Bacon mentions the chestnut in his Essay on Plantations. 

 The tree, however, if once plentiful, appears soon to have become compara- 

 tive scarcely ; for the author of a tract entitled An old Thrift newly revived, 

 published in 1612, recommends planting the chestnut as a "kind of timber 

 tree of which few grow in England;" and which, he adds, will not only pro- 

 duce " large and excellent good timber," but " good fruit, that poore people, 

 in time of dearth, may, with a small quantitie of oats or barley, make bread of." 

 He also says that a chestnut tree, " when you begin first to plant it, will grow 

 more in one yeare, than an oake will doe in two." (p. 7.) Mr. Samuel Hartlib, 



