The Garden Magazine, February, 1920 



271 



they walk to gather the great Horsechestnut 

 seeds — for are they not essential to playing 

 the famous game of "Conquerors"? Among 

 my own earliest recollections is that of a grove 

 of trees in an ecclesiastical seminary and how 



AS THEY SHOULD NOT BE PLANTED 



It is just this mistaken use of this noble tree close-set 



along village streets that accounts for the slight esteem 



in which it is held in most American communities. 



(A village near Harrisburg, Pa.) 



ENGLAND'S GREAT AVENUE 



Here at Bushey Park by Hampton 

 Court are the magnificent distances 

 and majestic intervals which the 

 tree demands and its litter, the 

 bane of neat householders, is of 

 no consequence 



much 1 used to think of a generous gift of nuts from the 

 student priests — and my proudest possession at a certain 

 time was a long rope of them. How carefully we used 

 to bore a hole through them — a horse shoe nail being the 

 favorite tool — dry them afterward and test their strength 

 at the end of a string in battles with other boys. Some 

 were clever in hardening them by roasting, but as far as 

 memory serves mine always burst when placed in the oven ! 

 As to their edible quality, deer eat the nuts greedily but 

 cattle leave them alone. 



Of the other Horsechestnuts in the world it is not my in- 

 tention to tell. A Chinese species is planted sparingly in 



temple grounds in Peking. The Japanese species grows to 

 as large a size and is no less beautiful than the common 

 species. Several of the eastern American species have col- 

 ored flowers from yellow to orange and dark-red. Also, 

 there are hybrids between the American and Grecian species 

 and two of these (carnea and Briotii) are strikingly beauti- 

 ful. But we are concerned only with the Common Horse- 

 chestnut — the favorite of the schoolboy, one of the most ac- 

 commodating of all trees, hardy, quick-growing, floriferous, 

 perhaps the handsomest of trees in the north temperate 

 regions, familiar to all, a tree of beauty, a joy to behold — 

 Aesculus Hippocastanum L. 



