2024- 



ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. 



PART III. 



considered excellent for gunpowder ; 

 it is also used for making crayons 

 for drawing, being, for that purpose, 

 charred in closed iron tubes. The 

 principal use of the hazel in England, 

 at the present time, is as a fruit tree ; 

 and a great quantity of the nuts, both 

 of the wild and cultivated kinds, are 

 sold in the English markets. " Be- 

 sides those raised at home," says 

 M'Culloch, " we import nuts from 

 different parts of France, Portugal, 

 and Spain, but principally from the 

 hitter. The Spanish nuts in the 

 highest estimation, though sold under 

 the name of Barcelona nuts, are not 

 really shipped at that city, but at 

 Tarragona, a little more to the south. 

 Mr. Inglis says that the annual average 

 export of nuts from Tarragona is 

 from 25,000 to 30,000 bags, of four 

 bags to the ton. The cost was, free 

 on board, in autumn, 1830, 17s. 6d. a 

 bag. (Spain in 1830, vol. ii. p. 362.) 

 The entries of nuts for home con- 

 sumption amount to from 100,000 to 

 125,000 bushels a year; the duty of 

 2s. a bushel producing from 10,000/. 

 to 12,550/. clear." (Diet, of Com., 

 p. 853.) Mr. M'Culloch adds, " The 

 kernels have a mild, farinaceous, oily 

 taste, agreeable to most palates. A 

 kind of chocolate has been prepared 

 from them ; and they have been sometimes made into bread. The expressed 

 oil of hazel nuts is little inferior to that of almonds." Evelyn tells us that hazel 

 nuts, though considered unwholesome to those who were asthmatic, were, in 

 his " time, thought to be fattening ; and, when full ripe, the filberts especially, 

 if peeled in warm water, as they blanch almonds, make a pudding very little, if 

 at all, inferior to what our ladies make of almonds." (vol. i. p. 217.) The oil 

 made from hazel nuts, which is usually called nut oil, is best made in the 

 middle of winter ; as, if made sooner, the nut yields less oil ; and, if later, it is 

 apt to become rancid. It is extracted in the same manner as the walnut oil. 

 (See p. 1429.). It is never made in England, and but rarely in France. 



As an ornamental tree, the hazel, when trained to a single stem, forms a 

 very handsome object for a lawn, near a winter's residence; because it not 

 only retains its leaves a long time in autumn, after they have assumed a rich 

 yellow colour, but, as soon as they drop, they discover the nearly full-grown 

 male catkins, which often come into full flower at the end of October, and 

 remain on the tree in that state throughout the winter ; and, in days of bright 

 sunshine in February and March, when slightly moved by the wind, they have 

 a gay and most enlivening appearance. The length of time the leaves remain 

 on the tree, and their rich yellow, render the hazel, as we have already ob- 

 served (p. 2019.), one of the most ornamental of all deciduous shrubs as 

 undergrowth ; it ranking, in this respect, with the oak and the beech. The 

 foliage of the birch and the willow, two of the commonest undergrowths in 

 indigenous woods, is meagre, and drops off suddenly ; while the leaves of the 

 ash and the chestnut drop off early, when they have scarcely changed colour; 

 and, hence, these trees, as undergrowths, are far inferior to the hazel in woods 

 which form conspicuous features in the view from a mansion, or where orna- 



