384 



HISTORY OF THK VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



is to be found in situations where it is not very- 

 likely to have been planted. Tradition says that 

 it was brought from Asia Minor by the Empe- 

 ror Tiberius, and that it soon spread all over the 

 wanner parts of Europe. At present it is very 

 abundant, as a native tree, in the mountainous 

 parts of the south of Europe; and it is also found 

 in North America, from New^ York to Carolina. 

 The castagno de cento cavalli, or 'chestnut of the 

 hundred horses,' upon Mount Etna, is probably 

 the largest tree in Europe, being more than two 

 hundred feet in circumference. Brydone, a tra- 

 veller who wrote about fifty years ago, has given 

 a particular description of this celebrated tree : 



" From this place it is not less than five or six 

 miles to the great chestnut trees, through forests 

 growing out of the lava, in several places almost 

 impassable. Of these trees there are many of an 

 enormous size ; but the castagno de cento cavalli 

 is by much the most celebrated. I have even 

 found it marked in an old map of Sicily, pub- 

 lished near an hundred years ago ; and in all the 

 maps of Etna and its environs, it makes a very 

 conspicuous figure. I own I was by no means 

 struck with its appearance, as it does not seem 

 to be one tree, but a bush of five large trees 

 growing together. We complained to our guides 

 of the imposition; when they unanimously as- 

 sured us, that, by the universal tradition and 

 even testimony of the country, all those were 

 once united in one stem; that their grandfathers 

 once remembered this, when it was looked upon 

 as the glory of the forest, and visited from all 

 quarters; that for many years past it had been 

 reduced to the venerable ruin we beheld. We 

 began to examine it with more attention, and 

 found that there is an appearance that these five 

 trees were really once united in one. The open- 

 ing in the middle is at present prodigious; and 

 it does, indeed, require faith to believe that so 

 vast a space was once occupied by solid timber. 

 But there is no appearance of bark on the inside 

 of any of the stumps, nor on the sides that are 

 opposite to one another. Mr Glover and I mea- 

 sured it separately, and brought it exactly to the 

 same size, viz. two hundred and four feet round. 

 If this was once united in one solid stem, it 

 must with justice, indeed, have been looked upon 

 as a very wonderful phenomenon in the vegetable 

 world, and deservedly styled the glory of the 

 forest. I have since been told by the Canonico 

 Recupero, an ingenious ecclesiastic of this place, 

 that he was at the expense of carrying up pea- 

 sants with tools to dig round the castagno de 

 cento cavalli, and he assures me, upon his honour, 

 that he found all these stems united below ground 

 in one root. I alleged that so extraordinary an 

 ■object must have been celebrated by many of 

 their writers; he told me that it had, and pro- 

 duced several examples. 



In most parts of Britain th« chestnut thrives 



well, there being authenticated anecdotes of many 

 very large ones in various parts of England and 

 Ireland. Nor is it confined to the southern parts 

 of the islands, for there is one in the garden at 

 Castle Leod, in Ross-shire, which measures at 

 least fifteen feet in circumference, and which, 

 only a few years ago, showed no signs of decay. 

 Nor is it by any means a slow-growing tree; for 

 in Kensington Gardens, and other places, where 

 it lias been planted along with elms and other 

 trees of very inferior timber, it equals them both 

 in height and diameter. If the symptoms of de- 

 cay that are apparent in some of those trees, of 

 which the age is known not much to exceed a 

 hundred years, are to be taken as evidence of the 

 general failure of the tree, and not of its being 

 in a situation indifferently adapted for it, we 

 should be led to question the great antiquity 

 which has been assigned to some of the chestnut 

 trees in England. The lives of trees must, how- 

 ever, like those of animals, vary witli the situa- 

 tions in which they are placed ; and the immense 

 size of the celebrated chestnuts must lead us to 

 assign to them a much longer duration than be- 

 longs to some others of the same species. 



Though none of the English chestnuts rival 

 the great one on Mount Etna, yet this country 

 possesses immense trees. That at Hitchin Priory, 

 in Hertfordshire, had, in 1789, a circumference 

 of more than fourteen yards at five feet from the 

 ground; and though the internal part was de- 

 cayed and hollowed by time, the external part 

 and the leaves were vigorous. Grose found one 

 of four diestnuts in the garden at Great Cranford 

 Park, Dorset, thirty-seven feet in circumference; 

 and though shattered and decayed, it still bore 

 good crops of fruit. In Gloucestershire there 

 was a chestnut, in the hollow of which was " a 

 pretty wainscoted room, enlightened with win- 

 dows, and furnished with seats;" and the great 

 chestnut at Tortworth, in the same county, had 

 dimensions, and a reputed age, belonging to no 

 other English tree. In the year 1150, it was 

 styled the great old chestnut tree. In 1720, it 

 measured fifty-one feet, at six feet from the 

 ground; but Lysons, by a later mens\iration, 

 1791, made it only forty-five feet three inches. 

 It bore fruit abundantly in 1788; and tradition 

 carries its origin back to the days of the Saxon 

 Egbert. 



The chestnut tree is very ornamental when 

 growing, and it makes excellent timber. In ex- 

 treme age, too, its timber is not so valuable as 

 when of a moderate size. One advantage of 

 chestnut is, that there is very little sap-wood; 

 and thus, in the growing state, it contains much 

 more timber of a durable quality than an oak o£- 

 the same dimensions. 



In the Transactions of the Society of Arts for 

 1789, there is an account of the compaiative du- 

 rability of oak and chestimt, when used fur post*. 



