CHAP. CV. 



corylaVse/e. casta^nea. 



1989 



925 



who wrote some years afterwards, says, " In divers places of Kent, as in and 

 about Gravesend, in the countrey, and elsewhere, very many prime timbers of 

 their old barns and houses are of chestnut wood; and yet there is now scarce 

 a chestnut tree within 20 miles of the place, and the people altogether ignorant 

 of such trees. This sheweth that in former times those places did abound 

 with such timber." {Legacy, &c, p. 18.) A proof how early the idea pre- 

 vailed of the wood of Quercus sessilifldra being that of the chestnut. In 

 the year 1676, an ancestor of the family of Wyndham of Felbrigg, in Nor- 

 folk, was said to be a great planter of chestnuts ; and some account of his 

 trees will be found in a succeeding page. The tree, however, was compara- 

 tively neglected, till towards the latter end of the last century ; when the 

 Society of Arts, reviving the idea (which, as we have seen above, was cur- 

 rent as long ago as the time of Henry VIII.), that the carpentry of many of 

 our old buildings consisted of chestnut wood, offered rewards for planting the 

 tree ; and these were given to a number of individuals who made plantations 

 of it. The tree is now chiefly planted as coppice-wood and for its fruit in 

 England, and as an ornamental tree in Scotland and Ireland. In England, it 

 is chiefly planted in hop countries, and on the margins of orchards, as a fruit 

 tree. There are considerable plantations of it in Devonshire, from which large 

 quantities of fruit are sent to the London market. 



In France, as in Britain, it was formerly believed that the timber in the 

 roofs of the oldest cathedrals, and in the Louvre and other buildings, was of 

 chestnut ; and it was thought, in consequence, that the tree had, in former 

 times, been much more abundant in France than it now is in that country. 

 Buffbn, however, demonstrated that oak wood, after a great number of years, 

 puts on the appearance of that of the chestnut; and, afterwards, Daubenton, 

 as we have seen (p. 1787.), set the question at rest, by showing that what had 

 been taken for chestnut was Q. sessilifldra. At the same time, it is observed 

 in the Dictionnaire des Eaux ct Forets, that chestnut trees must formerly have 

 been much more common in France than at present ; because orchards of 

 them are often referred to under the name of chataigneraies in ancient writings ; 

 and Acosta reports that the groves of chestnut trees in France were almost 

 totally destroyed in 1709, by a very severe frost, which followed suddenly after 

 heavy rains. In the Dictio7inaire Univcrsel (published at Lyons in 1791, art. 

 Chataignier), it is stated, from the records of the city of Orleans, that " the 

 Forest of Orleans has been observed to change alternately the species of its 

 timber ; to have been for a space of time in oak, then in chestnut, and after- 



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