THE CHESTNUT TREE. 291 
common food for the peasantry, but an article of exportation. 
According to M‘Culloch, chestnuts imported into this country 
from Spain and Italy, during the three years ending 1831, 
averaged 20,948 bushels ; and the duty of 2s. per bushel pro- 
duced, in 1842, a sum which proved that the consumption of 
that year must have amounted to 23,216 bushels. 
As foreign seeds are often kiln-dried, to adapt them for 
travelling in packages, the tree is generally propagated from 
seeds of English growth, or from those produced in the earliest 
districts in Scotland, where they ripen during favourable 
seasons. 
The seeds are frequently sown in October and November ; 
when this is the case the young plants generally rise through 
the ground in April, when they are in danger of receiving 
injury by frost, unless protected. In some climates, where 
late spring frosts are apt to prevail, nurserymen preserve the 
seeds during winter, on a loft floor, and sow them early in 
spring. By this method the young plants do not rise until 
the middle or end of May, a season when, without protection, 
they are more likely to be exempt from injury. The seeds 
are sometimes sown in drills, and placed two or three inches 
asunder, and the drills sixteen or eighteen inches apart ; but 
the more common method is to sow in beds, four feet wide. 
One bushel of fresh seed is sufficient for a bed thirty yards 
long. The cover on the seeds should be one inch deep. If 
the soil is very rich, it should be early and dry; otherwise 
the plants will grow to a late period in the season, and fail to 
ripen their wood sufficiently to resist the influence of frost ; 
consequently they will lose their tops and become branchy. 
The plants are sometimes removed from the seed-bed and 
transplanted into lines, at the age of one, but more frequently 
when two years old. In removing them they should be 
classed into two sizes, and have the extremities of their tap- 
roots pruned off. The plants in the lines should stand six 
inches asunder, and the lines should be about sixteen inches 
apart; where a greater space is allowed they are apt to be- 
come crooked and branchy, and in need of pruning. After 
