QUERNALS. 357 
and an equal number of styles. It encloses a like number of cells 
containing two anatropal ovules. When arrived at maturity, 
which is in the month of September or October, the involucrum 
is thick and coriaceous, charged on the outside with a soft prickly 
fasciculated envelope, and enclosing from one to five unilocular 
fruits by abortion, known under the name of Chestnuts. The 
pericarp is coriaceous, fibrous, and hairy on its external surface. 
The seed contains an embryo without albumen, under a mem- 
braneous covering; the cotyledons are voluminous, and plicated 
with fissures of greater or less depth, and, as is said, farinaceous. 
The Chestnut is the principal produce obtained from this useful 
tree; this fruit forms the principal food of the poor populations 
of the central flats of France, and of the valleys of the Alps. 
Improved by culture, the Chestnut-tree has given place to the 
variety called Marronier by the French cultivators, of which 
several varieties are known. They yield the large Chestnuts which 
Sometimes come into our markets. 
The native country of the Chestnut is not very” clearly ascer- 
tained ; it is probably Asiatic however—at least, the common name 
is Turkish, and is derived from their custom of grinding up the 
nuts and mixing it with the food of broken-winded horses, and 
probably of others also when favourites. 
The famous Chestnut-tree of Mount Etna, said in Sicily to be the 
“Chestnut of a Hundred Horses” (Castagno de cento Cavalli), is 
teported to be 170 feet in cireumference. Jean Houel gives the history 
and dimensions of this gigantic tree. “We departed,” he says, “from 
Ace-Reale in order to visit the Chestnut called of ‘the hundred 
horses.’ We passed through Saint Alfro and Piraino, where these 
trees are common, and where we found some superb old chestnuts. 
They grow very well in this part of Etna, and they are cultivated 
With great care. N ight not having yet come, we went at once to see 
the famous Chestnut which was the object of ourjourney. Its size is 
‘© much beyond all others that we find it impossible to express the 
Sensation we experienced on first seeing it. Having examined it 
carefully, I proceeded to sketch it from nature. I continued my 
sketch the next day, finishing it on the spot according to my custom, 
= and T can now say that it is a faithful portrait, having demonstrated 
ce beg my own satisfaction that the tree was 160 feet incircumference, and 
