)26 



CASTANEA. 



England.'" It is, however, worthy of remark that, shortly 

 subsequent to this period, the timber of the Chesnut seems 

 to have been confounded with that of the oak, for Hart- 

 lib, who wrote a few years after the author of the above- 

 named treatise, says, " in divers places in Kent, as in and 

 about Grravesend, in the country and elsewhere, many 

 prime timbers of their old barns and houses are of Chesnut 

 wood, and yet there is now scarce a Chesnut tree within 

 twenty miles of the place and the people altogether ignorant 

 of such trees." Evelyn also fell into the same error, for, 

 speaking of the Chesnut, he says, " I had once a very 

 large barn near the city, framed entirely of this timber, 11 

 which he supposed might have grown near this barn, as 

 " Fitzstephen had, in the reign of Henry II., described 

 a large and noble forest that grew on the northern side of 

 London." 



The fact is, as Buffon first observed, the wood of the 

 oak, more particularly that of the sessile-fruited variety, 

 assumes, in course of time, a near resemblance in colour 

 to that of the Chesnut in its best condition, or when young 

 and untainted at heart ; and as few Chesnuts could have 

 acquired the scantling frequently observed in the timbers 

 of these ancient buildings at the age dialing or decay 

 almost invariably commences, this, in itself, furnishes a 

 strong argument against the use of Chesnut timbers and 

 beams by our ancestors, inasmuch as the trees must have 

 become unfit for the purpose long before they had attained 

 the necessary dimensions. Another argument against the 

 indigenous origin of the Chesnut is the generally received 

 opinion that it is not even a native of the warmer parts 

 of the European continent, such as the south of France, 

 Italy, Spain, &c, where it nevertheless abounds and seems 

 to grow wild, but was first introduced by the Romans 



