THE CHESTNUT. 



13 



trenched ; and when newly gathered from the tree, 

 nothing can be more sweet or pleasing to the 

 palate : whilst others, and particularly the girls, 

 were carrying on an amusing warfare of love, 

 by pelting one another with the fruit. It seemed 

 to us as if the golden age had been restored ; 

 and that, abandoning all the luxuries and atten- 

 dant evils of civilized life, mankind had volun- 

 tarily returned to their pristine simplicity of fare, 

 when the esculus and the Chestnut-tree yielded 

 them their innocuous food, and when the inno- 

 cency of their lives corresponded with that of 

 their rustic nutriment." 



The Chestnut will thrive in most situations, 

 except w^here the soil is stiff and tenacious ; it 

 prefers a deep sandy loam, but, as we have seen, 

 attains a great size, at a considerable elevation 

 among the mountains of the south of Europe. 

 In England, it grows with the greatest rapidity 

 in the rich loamy soils of the valleys, but its tim- 

 ber is then brittle and useless ; in sheltered situa- 

 tions, where the soil is tolerably free, it attains 

 some height, but in poor gravelly soil, where its 

 roots will only run along the surface, the trunk 

 attains a considerable diameter, with a dispropor- 

 tionate spread of branches. Bosc remarks, that 

 wherever he has observed Chestnuts on moun- 

 tains in France, Switzerland, and Italy, they were 

 never in soils or on surfaces fit for the production 

 of corn; where the corn left off, there the 

 Chestnuts began ; and, in climates suitable for 

 corn, the tree is only found on rocky and flinty 

 soils. 



According to Phillips, the Chestnut seems to 

 delight in the cinerated substances thrown out of 



