THE CHESTNUT TREE. 289 
As a park or lawn tree it is more tender than the oak, and 
seldom arrives at the height or diameter of head attained by 
that tree. 
It prefers a deep sandy loam, or rich gravelly soil, such as 
the débris of rock, where the subsoil is open and dry ; on such 
its usual growth for eight or ten years after it takes root 
seldom falls short of three feet yearly. On favourable soil, in 
a close plantation and mild climate, it rises with a straight 
clean bole, and usually attains the height of from fifty to sixty 
feet. In exposed situations, and on retentive and wet sub- 
soils, the tree ramifies near the surface of the ground, and 
seldom ripens its young shoots sufficiently to resist frost. 
One of the oldest chestnut trees in the world stands on 
Mount Etna. M. Houel, in his Voyage en Sicile, states that he 
visited it, and found it in a state of decay. It had lost the 
greater part of its branches, and its trunk was quite hollow. 
A house was erected in the interior, with some country people 
living in it, with an oven, in which, according to the custom 
of the country, they dried chestnuts, filberts, and other fruits, 
which they wished to preserve for winter use ; using for fuel, 
when they could find no other, pieces cut with a hatchet from 
the interior of the tree. Kircher, about the year 1670, affirms 
that an entire flock of sheep might be enclosed in the Etna 
chestnut tree as in a fold. Brydon records his tour through 
Sicily in 1770, and states that the decayed trunk of this tree 
measured 204 feet in circumference. The oldest chestnut 
tree in England is supposed to be that at Tortworth, the pro- 
perty of Lord Ducie, in Gloucestershire. It stands on a soft 
loamy clay soil, on the north-west declivity of a hill) Evelyn 
states it to have been remarkable for its magnitude in the 
reign of King Stephen (1135): it was then called the Great 
Chestnut of Tortworth ; from which it may reasonably be 
presumed to have existed before the Conquest. Strutt, in his 
Sylva Britannica, in 1820, states its measurement, at five feet 
from the ground, to be fifty-two feet in circumference, and its 
cubical contents, according to the customary method of measur- 
ing timber, to be 1965 feet. It is now about forty-five feet 
T 
