HORSE-CHESNUT. 



35 



or one hundred feet, with a trunk of proportionate thickness. 

 In Loudon's "Arboretum Britannicum," where the dimen- 

 sions of most of the finest trees growing in England, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland, are recorded, we find several with trunks 

 measuring five, six, and nine feet respectively, in diameter, 

 and with heads, some of them covering an area of one hun- 

 dred feet in diameter. It grows with an erect and pyra- 

 midal head ; the leaves are large and composed of seven 

 leafits, their colour a deep rich green ; when first deve- 

 loped, or as they hurst from the bud, they are small and 

 beautifully folded longitudinally, and covered with a down 

 or pubescence, which falls off as they expand. 



The growth of the leaves and annual shoot is very rapid, 

 both being frequently perfected in three or four weeks from 

 the first bursting of the bud, although the shoot is very 

 strong, and often measures eighteen or twenty inches in 

 length ; the flowers, whose 

 racemes terminate the 

 shoots, begin to expand as 

 soon as the leaves are per- 

 fected ; they are white, 

 variegated with red and 

 yellow, and have not in- 

 aptly been compared to 

 those of a gigantic hya- 

 cinth. The spray of the 

 Horse-chesnut is clumsy 

 and stiff in its appearance, 

 which arises from the an- 

 gular mode of its growth 

 and the thickness of the 

 shoots ; it however becomes 

 less so as it advances in 



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