1996 AllBOIlliTUM AND FRUTiCETUM. 1'AllT III. 



French cooks always slit the skin of all except one; and, when that cracks and 

 flies off, they know that the rest are done. Chestnut flour is kept in casks, 

 or in earthen bottles well corked ; and it will remain good for years. La ga/ette 

 is a species of thick flat cake, which is made without yeast, and baked on a 

 kind of girdle, or iron plate, or on a hot flat stone. It is generally mixed with 

 milk and a little salt, and is sometimes made richer by the addition of eggs and 

 butter ; and sometimes, when baked, it is covered with a rich custard before 

 serving. La polenta is made by boiling the chestnut flour in water or milk, 

 and continually stirring it, till it has become quite thick, and will no longer stick 

 to the fingers. When made with water, it is frequently eaten with milk, in the 

 manner that oatmeal porridge is in Scotland. Besides these modes of dressing 

 chestnuts, which are common in Italy as well as in France, many others might 

 be mentioned ; particularly a kind of bouilli, called chatigna, which is made 

 by boiling the entire chestnuts, after they have been dried and freed from 

 their skins, in water with a little salt, till they become soft, and then breaking 

 and mixing them together like mashed potatoes; and a sweetmeat, called 

 tnarrons glaces, which is made by dipping the marrons into clarified sugar, and 

 then drying them, and which is common in the confectioners' shops in Paris. 

 (See Parmentier's Traite de la Chdtaigne ; Mem. de Desmarets in Journ. de 

 Physique for 1 771 and 1772 ; Du Ham. Arb., i. p. 136. ; N. Du Ham. iii. p. 65. ; 

 Diet. Class., &c., art. Chataignier; Nouv. Cours, &c.) On the foreign modes 

 of dressing chestnuts in Evelyn's time, that author says, " The best tables 

 in France and Italy make them a service, eating them with salt, in wine, 

 or juice of lemon and sugar, being first roasted in embers on the chaplet. 

 In Italy, they boil them in wine, and then smoke them a little. These 

 they call anseri, or geese : I know not why. Those of Piedmont add fennel, 

 cinnamon, and nutmeg to their wine; but first they peel them. Others mace- 

 rate them in rose-water. The bread of the flour is exceedingly nutritive: 

 it is a robust food, and makes women well-complexioned, as I have read in a 

 good author. They also make fritters of chestnut flour, which they wet with 

 rose-water, and sprinkle with grated parmigans, and so fry them in fresh 

 butter for a delicate." (Hunt. Evel., i. p. 162.) Evelyn also says that "the 

 flour of chestnuts made into an electuary with honey, and eaten fasting, is an 

 approved remedy against spitting of blood and the cough; and a decoction of 

 the rind of the tree tinctures hair of a golden colour, esteemed a beauty in 

 some countries." (Ibid., p. 163.) Sugar is said to have been obtained in 

 France from chestnuts by the same process as is used for the extraction of 

 the sugar from beet, and at the rate of 14 per cent; which is more than the 

 average produce of the beet-root. (Bon Sens, as quoted in the Athenceum of 

 Feb. 25. 1837.) 



As a Tree for useful Plantations, the chestnut is chiefly valuable as under- 

 wood, and for its fruit. As underwood, us already mentioned, it is grown, in 

 England, for hop-poles, fence-wood, and hoops. The poles last as long as 

 those of the ash, and longer ; but they do not grow so fast, and they are apt 

 to send out stout side shoots, which, if not checked, either by pruning or by 

 the closeness of the plantation, cause, Cobbett observes, " the upper part of the 

 pole to diminish in size too rapidly. To get a chestnut pole any where between 

 12ft. and 20ft. in length, there will also be a disproportionate but ; a dis- 

 advantage that none but skilful hop-planters can know. The vines of the hop 

 (and it is the same with all other climbing plants) do not like to have a big 

 thing to go round at starting." (Woodlands.) Hence intelligent hop-planters, 

 " in order to obviate the injury arising from large-butted poles, stick in little 

 rods as leaders, to conduct the vine to the pole at 2 ft. or 3 ft. from the ground. 

 (Ibid.} For this reason, the plants, in a plantation of chestnuts for under- 

 growth, ought not to be farther apart than 5 ft. every way ; in which case they 

 will require very little pruning, but will become drawn up of a proper size. 

 When the tree is planted for timber, its properties suggest the propriety of 

 cutting it down when the trunk is under 1 ft. in diameter, and for using it 

 chiefly in rustic structures, gate-posts, and fencing. As a fruit tree, we have 



