42 FAMILIAR TREES 
De Candolle has pointed out, considering that 
names which are virtually identical are applied to 
the tree in all the most ancient languages of 
Central Europe, it is more probable that the town 
took its name from the trees which surrounded 
it. Thus the Breton Kistenen, for the tree, and 
Kistin, for its fruit, and the, Welsh Castun-wydden 
and Sataen, are closely related to the French 
Chdtaigne and to the Latin name which is still the 
scientific appellation of the genus. 
According to Pliny, the Greeks obtained the 
tree from Sardis in Asia Minor, at least five cen- 
turies before the Christian era, a statement which 
De Candolle doubts, since he considers the tree 
undoubtedly wild in Greece, where, as early as the 
fourth century B.c., Theophrastus, “the Father of 
Botany,” speaks of it as covering the slopes of 
Olympus. 
Old Chestnut-trees, especially when once lopped 
close to the ground, seem often to exhibit a grow- 
ing together or fusion of many stems into one, 
a circumstance that explains many of the in- 
stances of enormous circumference which have 
led authors not only to assert the indigenous 
character of the species, but also to claim for it 
an almost fabulous longevity. 
The largest Chestnut-tree in the world is un- 
doubtedly the Castagno di cento cavalli (“Chestnut 
of a hundred horses”) in the forest of Carpinetto, 
on the east side of Mount Etna. It is 160 feet 
in circumference, and entirely hollow, a kiln for 
drying chestnuts—an article of food of considerable 
