18 Some Enquiry concerning 



" No bark tempts the lover so much to make it the depository of his mistress's 

 name," says Gilpin ; and Virgil (Eel. v. 13.), most assuredly, has recorded an 

 inscription," viridi in cortice Fagi," " upon the green bark of a Fagus." The 

 stem of the chestnut, when the tree has attained maturity, we know to be 

 covered with a rugged intractable rind, utterly unfit for the reception of any 

 legible characters; but the bark of a youthful chestnut, a tree of thirty or forty 

 years' growth, presents a tablet of smoothness and beauty fully equal to that 

 of the beech. It is not impossible that the epithet " viridi " may be correctly 

 interpreted " young ; " for, generally speaking, while the surface of the bark 

 of the beech is covered with a thin deposit of very white fungus, that of the 

 young chestnut is decidedly green. Having compared the bark of both species, 

 and experimentalised upon them with the knife, 



-" servant incisae nomina Fagi, 



CEnone legitur falce notata mea," 



I can pronounce that the youthful chestnut is quite in sufficient harmony with 

 the " viridi in cortice," to assert its right to the expression. The locality of 

 this tree, so often noticed by Virgil, on the banks of the Mincio, " qua se sub- 

 ducere colles incipiunt," is highly suitable to the geographical position of the 

 chestnut, which covers, in such beautiful profusion, the declivities of the Alps, 

 on the Italian side ; and which, throughout Italy, is a tree of far greater noto- 

 riety than the beech. Count Stolberg (Travels, ii. 475.), possessing all the 

 enthusiastic veneration for the beech due to that magnificent tree, in true al- 

 legiance, from a native of the Hercynian Forest, in the midst of his transport 

 on beholding the matchless chestnuts of Mount Etna, tells us, " that on the 

 side towards Nicolosi it is covered with oaks, and some beeches, the sight of 

 which gave us greater pleasure, because this charming tree is seldom met with 

 in Italy and Sicily ; but neither the tree nor its foliage attain the same beauty 

 here as they do in our country." 



It remains now to apply the result of this investigation to the passages in 

 Caesar and Virgil connected with the Fagus, in which so much difficulty is 

 experienced ; which difficulty, by translating the word " chestnut," instead of 

 " beech," will, I think, be most satisfactorily overcome. The passages have 

 been commented upon in the Arboretum (Introduct. p. 21.) ; and, in reference 

 to those remarks, I have been induced to state some grounds for the opinion* 



* The opinions alluded to in the Arboretum are given as follows : — " Caesar 

 says that Britain supplies timber of all sorts, like Gaul ; ' praeter fagum atque 

 abietem,' which is supposed erroneously to mean the beech and the fir. By 

 Fagus we are to understand the Pagus Castanea, or Spanish chestnut, and 

 by Abies, the silver fir ; neither of them indigenous to our island, although 

 they flourish when planted." As far as the Abies is concerned, the foregoing 

 explanation is admitted to be simple and satisfactory ; yet what a strange de- 

 parture from its old classic name we have in this very silver fir. The unini- 

 tiated might have expected that Abies would certainly have formed one of 

 its cognomina ; yet the Linnaean Pinus Picea is now exchanged for the Picea 

 pectinata, and the original Abies sedulously excluded. With regard to the 

 epithet " pectinated," the leaves of the silver fir do certainly correspond with 

 the figure of a comb ; but it may be questioned if Stackhouse, in the preface 

 to Thevphrastus (vi. vii.), is correct in the interpretation and emendation he 

 has bestowed upon the Greek account of the Elate, or silver fir. Theophras- 

 tus (iii. 8.) describes the tree as having " branches like wings, gradually di- 

 minishing, so that its whole form resembles a ' tholos,' or cupola, much in the 

 shape of the Boeotian helmet." This description, applied by Theophrastus to 

 the whole tree, is reduced, by Stackhouse, to be intended for a delineation of 

 the leafor&y'y and, instead of kvv'uuc, helmets, he proposes the word Kravkaic, 

 combs : " Licet conjicere tcravkav BoiwrLav dentibus utrinque ex adverso in- 

 structam fuisse, ut in buxis et eburneis nostris ; Angl. a double-toothed 

 comb." What sort of combs was used by the Boeotians, or whether they used 



