XXVIL. | CHESTNUT. 217 
THE CHESTNUT TREE (Castanca vesca). 
The sweet Chestnut attains to large dimensions, and 
is found thinly scattered over most of our English 
counties. It is abundant in the southern parts of Europe, 
and extends eastward to the Caucasus. It is also met 
with in the mountainous parts of Virginia, Georgia, and 
Carolina, in North America. 
The wood is brown in colour, of moderate hardness 
and weight, has a clean fine grain, and is rather porous. 
The medullary rays cannot be distinctly traced in it, and 
it has no alburnum or sap-wood. . These two characteristic 
points serve to distinguish it from the British Oak, for 
which it has sometimes been mistaken. There is also . 
this further difference between them, the Chestnut is of 
slower growth than the British Oak. 
The Chestnut timber stood in high favour at one time, 
and it is even supposed that preference was given to it 
over Oak for employment in some of our oldest and best 
specimens of civil architecture, but upon careful exami- 
nation of the woods during reparations it has generally 
proved to be Oak of native growth that had been used, 
and not Chestnut. 
The Chestnut is scarcely ever used now except for 
very common or ordinary works, such as posts, rails, 
palings, hop-poles, &c.; but as it is durable when kept 
wholly submerged, it may be used for piles, sluices, &c., 
with advantage. 
It is on record that specimens of the sweet Chestnut 
have attained to a very great size and remarkable 
longevity ; one standing lately in Sicily is said to have 
measured 160 feet in circumference; the centre part, 
however, was quite gone, and the cavity thus formed was 
considered to be sufficiently large to give shelter to a 
