THE HORSECHESTNUT 



it has always been needed. Every father has 

 thoughts for providing toward the future welfare of 

 his children, and if these thoughts tend more to their 

 material advancement in bodily comforts it is not 

 that he wishes to starve their minds. From per- 

 sonal experience every present-day father knows 

 the needs of the one, fewer know the needs of both. 

 As the race develops so a proper appreciation of the 

 needs of body and mind will be attained, and the fact 

 clearly appreciated that mind is greater than matter 

 and its needs even more important. In God's great 

 book of Nature will be found food essential to the full 

 and proper development of the human race. All this 

 may seem to belong more to the realm of philosophy 

 than to the matter of the Horsechestnut, and yet the 

 story of the tree is, after all, the commonplace story 

 of the triumph of the beautiful over the sordid cares 

 of life. And it demonstrates anew the truism that 

 beauty is transcendental. 



Thanks to the letters published by William Dar- 

 lington in his "Memorials of John Bartram and 

 Humphry Marshall" in 1849, the story of the intro- 

 duction of the Horsechestnut into America is on 

 record. Thus page 146, London, September 16, 1741 : 



"I have sent some Horsechestnuts which are ripe 

 earlier than usual ; hope they will come fit for plant- 

 ing." P. Collinson, p. 175; April i6th, 1746: 



123 



