98 



SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



for casks and water-pipes, not being liable to shrink after 

 it is once seasoned. 



" Staves that nor shrink nor swell 



The cooper's close-wrought cask to chestnut owes." 



DODSLEY. 



In Italy it is planted for stakes for vines ; and with 

 us for hop-poles. Some of the timber is finely varie- 

 gated ; and a colour being given to it by the use of alum- 

 water, logwood, and Brazil-wood, it has been taken for 

 mahogany. 



Among the lower orders of the people in the Apen- 

 nines, in Savoy, and some parts of the south of France, 

 the nuts are a common article of food ; not only boiled 

 or roasted, but also made into flour, and formed into 

 bread, cakes, and puddings. They are considered hard 

 of digestion ; yet there are instances in Italy of men living 

 to the age of ninety or a hundi'ed years, who have fed 

 wholly on Chestnuts. They are eaten in Italy with 

 orange or lemon juice and sugar, and are sold in the 

 streets, roasted on a portable furnace ; and were brought 

 to fashionable tables in desserts, long before they were 

 known as an article of luxury in England. These nuts 

 are sometimes used for whitening Mnen, and for making 

 starch. 



Mr. Mart3m deeply laments the neglect shown to this 

 tree, and is earnest to encourage its cultivation. " Let 

 us hope, however," says he, " to see it rear its head again 

 as a timber-tree among us. A decree of the Council of 

 Paris was published in May 1720, ordering that all the 

 great roads should be planted with Chestnut, or other such 

 fruit or forest trees as were suitable to the nature of the 



