DECIDUOUS TREES. 335 



expand for centuries after the tops are falling with decay. The 

 knotted base of the old Tortsworth chestnut (supposed to date 

 back to the time of the occupation of Britain by the Romans), is 

 fifty-two feet in circumference at five feet from the ground 1 It 

 was so large as to be called the "Great Chestnut of Tortsworth" 

 as early as A. D. 1135. The most noted chestnut trees in the 

 world are the venerable trunks on Mount Etna, where the living 

 shells of what are supposed once to have been solid trees, measure 

 from sixty-four to one hundred and eighty feet in circumference 

 near the root ! 



The chestout was the favorite tree of the great master of the 

 picturesque in landscape painting, Salvator Rosa, and flourished 

 in the mountains of Calabria, where he painted. For decorative 

 planting a noted English author, already quoted (Bosc), thus 

 speaks of it : — " As an ornamental tree, the chestnut ought to be 

 placed before the oak. Its beautiful leaves, which are never at- 

 tacked by insects, and which hang on the trees till very late in 

 autumn, mass better than those of the oak, and give more shade. 

 An old chestnut standing alone produces a superb effect." 



The leaves of the chestnut expand immediately after those of 

 the horse-chestnut and maple, and a little earlier than those of the 

 oak. They are from six to nine inches long, two to three inches 

 wide, pointed, with scolloped edges, and of a warm green color. The 

 flowers appear in July, when most trees have done blooming, and 

 though not interesting or showy in themselves, the mass of them, 

 mingling their yellowish white with the leaves, or rather projecting 

 beyond the leaves, on the crown of the tree, fringe it with a rich 

 golden color which is very effective, especially where relieved on a 

 hill-side against the darker foliage of other trees. The foliage of 

 this species of chestnut is rarely so dense and luxuriant as that of 

 the horse-chestnuts or the sugar maple, but it divides at an earlier 

 age into nobler masses. Everybody knows the fruit or nut ; but 

 everybody does not know what a great prickly burr encases it 

 while growing, and, unluckily for the pleasure-grounds where a 

 chestnut grows, falls with it, and endangers the feet of unwary 

 children or the bodies of summer loungers in its shade. Yet these 

 burrs add much to the beauty of the foliage by forming tufts of 



