128 



THE PRACTICAL GARDENER. 



however preferable. Langley asserts, that he has known 

 great quantities produced by chips only, where the trees liad 

 been hewed after felling ; and one old author has proposed 

 ploughing down these chips with a view to produce an eco- 

 nomical copse. 



Walnut. — {J t/gla ns rcgia.) 



The walnut-tree is evidently a native of Persia and China, 

 and the Grecian names for its fruit, says Phillips, of " Per- 

 sicon and Basilicon, Persian or royal nut, besjx'ak it to have 

 been brought from Persia either by the monarchs of Greece 

 themselves, or sent thither from the kings of Persia." The 

 name, walnut, seems to be derived from Gaul jiuty the seeds 

 or nut5 being first imported from France, and the generic 

 nsLvnCy Jt/g/a/iSj from Jovis-glans, a name given them, according 

 to Pliny, by the Romans, and which the Latins translated 

 Diu-glanSy from whence our Juglans. The walnut is one of 

 the trees which was well known to the ancients, and is much 

 noticed by their poets and historians, and many extraordinary 

 virtues are related to have been due to this tree. 



It is stilted in the Ilortus Kcwciisls to have been introduced 

 in 1562, but there is reason to suppose that its date of intro- 

 duction must be much earlier ; for old Gerard, who wrote 

 about thirty years only after that date, says, The walnut- 

 tree groweth in fields neere common highwaics, in a fat and 

 fruitfull ground, and in orchards." And TurncM', in his Herbal, 

 of 1j(>1, speaks of it as being so common as to need no de- 

 scription. It appears to have been extensively cultivated in 

 this country for the sake of its wood, which was almost uni- 

 versally used for all kinds of valuable furniture previously to 

 the introduction of mahogany, which latter circumstance did not 

 take place till the beginning of the eighteenth century. In some 

 parts of Germany, no young farmer is allowed to marry until 

 he gives satisfactory proofs of having planted a stated number 

 of walnut-trees. The walnut has never been very extensively 

 planted in this country, considering the size to which the tree at- 

 tains, and the usefulness of the timber, and this is the more sin- 

 gular as this timber has been known to have brought very higli 



