jfiSCULUS HIPPOCASLENUM -HORSE CHESNUT, 



CLASS, HEPTANDR1A ; ORDER, MONOGYNIA. 

 NATURAL ORDER, HlPPOCASTANACEjfi. 



GEN. CHAR. Calyx, swelled, four or five toothed. Corol, 

 correspondingly, four or five petalled, inserted on the former, 

 unequal, and downy. Capsule, three celled. Seeds, large solitary. 

 SPEC. CHAR. Leaves, digitate, with seven divisions. Corol, five 

 petalled, spreading. 



This magnificent, tree as Tyas remarks, was originally brought 

 from India, and has been naturalized in Europe for more than two 

 centuries ; in America not quite so long, as it took quite a circui- 

 tous mode of reaching us, by way of Constantinople, Vienna, Italy, 

 France, and England. It gives the deepest and most solemn 

 shade of any tree that is yet known, and for this purpose, as well as 

 its extreme cleanliness and rapidity of growth, is much used in 

 parks, avenues, streets, and to shade houses. It luxuriates in the 

 Tuilleries in France, where it rises around the great basin in 

 masses of incomparable beauty, and at the Luxembourg, spreads 

 its branches in accordant pomp and splendor. It can easily be 

 distinguished from other trees by its magnificence of size and 

 form, were not the five or seven leaves it bears on each footstalk, 

 spread out like a human hand, a sufficient distinction. Its blossom 

 is certainly one of the most splendid and elegant produced by any 

 timber tree in the country. When in full flower, its delicate spikes 



