THE CHESNUT. 



85 



which may be of comparatively short duration: yet 

 the Tortworth Chesnut does not appear to have 

 been treated with the respect due to its age and 

 magnitude, or the care desirable for its continuance. 

 It is only within a few years that it has been re- 

 lieved from the pressure of three walls, in the angle 

 of which it stood, and which must have greatly 

 injured the spreading of its roots. The axe which 

 might have been commendably employed in clearing 

 the approach to it of brambles and briers, has, on 

 the contrary, been barbarously, though not recently, 

 applied to the tree itself ; which has been wantonly 

 despoiled of several large limbs on the north-east 

 side, apparently many years ago ; it is in conse- 

 quence much decayed on that side, whilst on the 

 others it is still sound. The Tortworth Chesnut, in 

 1766, measured fifty feet in circumference, at five 

 feet from the ground. Its present measurement, at 

 the same height, is fifty-two feet. The body is ten 

 feet in height, to the fork, where it divides into three 

 limbs, one of which, at the period already mentioned, 

 measured twenty-eight feet and a half in girth, at the 

 distance of five feet from the parent stem. The 

 solid contents, according to the customary method 

 of measuring timber, is one thousand nine hundred 

 and sixty-five feet ; but its true geometrical contents 

 must be much more. Young trees are now nursing 

 from the nuts which it bore three years ago ; and it 



