90 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



Earl of Fife and other land-proprietors to enrich their 

 northern estates, by the planting of chesnut-trees : while 

 in the more congenial southern counties the tree is 

 scarcely known, and seldom seen without the boundaries 

 of the park fence. 



M. Valmont Bomare makes the same observation on 

 the neglect of his countrymen that without offence we 

 would make to our own, on the unaccountable neglect of 

 the cultivation of this tree, when it is the general opinion 

 that, the oak excepted, it should be attended to before 

 any other forest-tree. 



"It is to be regretted," says this able French writer, 

 " that there are not to be found so many chesnut-trees in 

 our provinces where this timber used to abound." Yet 

 we find that they have many large forests composed en- 

 tirely of those trees in Britanny ; where you see the 

 fruit piled up within their cabins as a winter food for the 

 poor, who seldom taste the luxury of wheaten bread. 



The chesnut-wood has recently been successfully ap- 

 plied to the purposes of dyeing and tanning, thus forming 

 a substitute for log-wood and oak-bark. Leather tanned 

 by it, is declared, by the gentleman who made the ex- 

 periment, to be superior to that tanned with oak-bark ; 

 and in dyeing, its affinity for wool is said, on the same 

 authority, to be greater than that of either galls or 

 sumach, and consequently the colour given is more per- 

 manent : it also makes admirable ink. 



The great chesnut-tree near Mount Etna is perhaps 

 one of the most extraordinary trees in the Old World. 

 It is called " The chesnut-tree of a Hundred Horses," 

 from a traditionary tale that Joan of Arragon, when she 

 visited Mount Etna, being attended by her principal 

 nobility, a heavy shower obliged them to take refuge 

 under this tree, the immense branches of which sheltered 

 the whole party. According to the account given of it 



