the Quercus and Fagns of the Ancients. 19 



" that the tree Csesar called the Fagus was the sweet chestnut, .Fagus Cas- 

 tanea i." If those grounds are thought to be substantial, Caesar's gratuitous 

 denial of the existence of the Fagus in Britain no longer excites surprise. The 

 vast forests of chestnuts, covering the base of the mountains in both Cisalpine 

 and Transalpine Gaul, could not have escaped the eagle eye of Caesar ; and 

 the non-appearance of the tree in the woods of the Cantii and the Cassii of 

 Britain would have been equally remarkable ; while the information he ob- 

 tained from other observers, which, as far as it goes, we know to have been 

 singularly correct, confirmed him in his statement that the Fagus was not to be 

 met with in the island. 



The difficulties attendant upon the passage in Virgil are not, however, dis- 

 posed of with the same facility. What does the poet say ? In his account of 

 the perfection at which the art of grafting had arrived, he exclaims : — 



" The thin-leaved arbute hazel [? walnut] grafts receives, 

 And planes huge apples bear, that bore but leaves. 

 Thus mastful beech the bristly chestnut bears, 

 And the wild ash is white with blooming pears. 

 And greedy swine from grafted elms are fed, 

 With falling acorns, that on oaks are bred." 



Dryderfs Translation, Georgic ii. 96. 



In the original " Castaneos Fagos," the chestnut is brought to produce the 

 " Fagos," commonly understood to mean the "beech mast ;" that is, the 

 better tree is sacrificed, by grafting, to the worse, a supposition unworthy of 

 both poetry and philosophy, and, as such, very naturally productive of much 

 clamour among the commentators on Virgil. No manuscript sanctions any 

 alteration in the text, nor can any thing justify the supposition of Servius, 

 that, by the miraculous agency of the grammatical figure Hypallage, we are to 

 understand the very reverse of what is stated. Even Pliny seems somewhat 

 at a loss for the meaning, for he omits all mention of this, when he speaks of 

 the other exhibitions of the powers of grafting. (2V". H., xv. 17.) " Pars haec 

 vitse jampridem pervenit ad culmen, expertis cuncta hominibus. Quippe cum 

 Virgilius insitam nucibus arbutum, malis platanum, cerasis ulmuin dicat, nee 

 quidquam amplius excogitari potest." Professor Martyn (Virg., vol. ii. p. 150) 

 has, indeed, cut the Gordian knot, by assuming that the ancients actually gave 

 a preference to the fruit of the beech over that of the chestnut. Were this 

 the case, a most extraordinary change must have taken place, either in the 

 flavour of the nuts, or in the palates of the human race. He supports his 

 assumption by the authority of Pliny ; who, he says, " mentions chestnuts as 

 a very sorry sort of fruit, and seems to wonder that nature should take such 

 care of them as to defend them with a prickly husk. " Armatum iis echinato 

 calyce vallum, mirumque vilissima esse quae tanta, occultaverit cura, naturae." 

 (2V. H., xv. 25.) It is more wonderful that the professor should not have 

 perceived that vilissima by no means corresponds with his word sorry, but 

 merely signifies " most plentiful and cheap." True it is that Pliny says " Dul- 

 cissima omnium fagi," which he seems to translate from Theophrastus, " y\v- 

 kvtcitu Se ra ri/e <bnyov ;" and adds, " ut qua obsessos etiam homines durasse in 

 oppido Chio, tradat Cornelius Alexander." Under the scourge of famine, it 

 is not surprising that the Chians should have subsisted upon beech mast, if they 

 could procure enough ; under similar circumstances, rats and horseflesh are 

 accounted dainties : but, after all, it becomes a question whether the Greek 

 authority for this story might not have written " tpayol" which Cornelius 

 Alexander would have Latinised by " Fagi," meaning the chestnut ; trees far 

 more likely to have grown in Chios, or to have sent their fruit from the 

 neighbouring coast of Asia Minor. Our countryman Grimbald, or Grimoal- 



any at all, we know not; but there is sufficient authority (Pollux, i. 10.) to 

 presume that they were remarkable for their helmets. 



c 2 



