VOL. LXl.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 11,1 



ancient seat of the family of Rudhall, is built with chestnut, which probably grew 

 on that estate; for though no tree of the kind is now to be found growing wild 

 in that part of the country, yet there can be no doubt, but that formerly chestnut 

 trees were the natural growth of the neighbouring wood lands, since we find that 

 Roger Earl of Hereford, founder of the Abbey of Flaxley, in Gloucestershire, 

 by his charter, printed in Dugdale's Monasticon, torn. 1, p. 884, gave the monks 

 there, the tythe of the chestnuts in the forest of Deane, ivhich is not above 7 or 

 8 miles from Rudhall. The words are, singulis annis totam decimam castanearuin 

 de Dena. In the court before the house at Hagley Hall, in Worcestershire, 

 the seat of Lord Lyttelton, are 2 vast sweet chestnut trees, which seem to be 

 at least 2, if not 300 years old; and Mr. Evelyn, in his Sylva, p. 232, mentions 

 one, of an enormous size, at Tortsworth, in Gloucestershire, which hath con- 

 tinued a signal boundary to that manor, from King Stephen's time, as it stands 

 upon record ; and which tree is still living, and surrounded by many young ones, 

 that have come up from the nuts dropped by the parent tree. Mr. Evelyn also 

 assures us, that he had a barn framed entirely of chestnut timber, which had 

 been cut down in its neighbourhood. In the forest of Kent, adjoining to Sussex, 

 there still remain large old chestnut stubs, which were left by the woodmen as 

 termini, or boundaries, either of parishes, or private property. Besides this, 

 there are to this day in the n. e. part of Kent, several large woods, consisting 

 principally of chestnut trees and stubs. In the parish of Milton, near Sitting- 

 borne, is a manor called Norwood Casteney, otherwise Chesteney, from its 

 situation among chestnut woods, which reach to the highway from London to 

 Dover, and give name to a hill between Newington and Sittingborne, it being 

 called Chestnut Hill, the chestnut trees growing plentifully on each side of it, 

 and in woods round it for many miles. And by the particulars for leases of 

 crown lands in Kent, temp. Eliz. Roll 3, N° 8, now in the augmentation 

 office, it appears that there is, in the same parish of Milton, a wood containing 

 278 acres and a half, called Cheston, otherwise Chestnut wood. To conclude, 

 my worthy friend, Edward Hasted, Esq. of Sutton at Hone, near Dartford, in 

 Kent, F. R. s., and f. s. a., assures me that one of his tenants at Newington, 

 a few years since grubbed up forty acres of wood, which were entirely chestnut." 

 In the very out-set of the argument, Mr. Barrington imposes on himself, by 

 changing the terms of the question. " Since you sent me, says he to Dr. 

 Watson, the specimen of supposed chestnut, which was taken from the old hall 

 of Clifford's Inn, I have been at some pains to examine the authority for the 

 prevailing notion, with regard to this being an indigenous tree" but in p. 24, he 

 says, " I shall begin by considering the proofs, which are commonly relied on to 

 the Spanish or sweet chestnut being indigenous in Great-Britain." — Though not 

 one word has preceded, though not one word follows, of the Spanish and the 



