152 TIMBER AND TIMBER TREES. [CHAP. 



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 can scarcely be distinctly traced in 

 it by the unaided eye, and it has a very narrow alburnum 

 or sap-wood. The characteristic points, which serve to 

 distinguish it from the British Oak, for which it has 

 sometimes been mistaken, are the want of broad medullary 

 rays, and certain features in the numerous fine ones. 

 There is also this further difiference 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 i6o 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 

 troop of at least eighty men. Another, but much smaller, 

 in the department of the Cher, France, measured over 

 30 feet in circumference ; this has been known for five or 



