HAZEL-NUT TREE. 



159 



among other fruit to the best tables for dessert, and are 

 said to fatten, but too much eaten are obnoxious to the 

 asthmatic. In the mean time of this I have had expe- 

 rience, that Hazel-nuts, but the Filbert especially, being 

 full ripe, and peeled in warm water (as they blanch 

 almonds) make a pudding very little, if at all, inferior to 

 that our ladies make of ahnonds." 



The following passage is interesting to an admirer of 

 Evel3ni : 



" I do not,'' says he, " confound the filbert Pontic, or 

 filberd distinguished by its beard, with our foresters, or 

 bald Hazel-nuts, which doubtless we had from abroad, 

 and bearing the names of Avelan, Avehn ; as I find in 

 some ancient records and deeds in my custody, vvhere 

 my ancestors' names were written Avelan, alias Evelin, 

 generally." 



He observes that the Hazel " prospers well where 

 quarries of freestone lie underneath, as at Hazelbury in 

 Wilts ; Hazeling-field in Cambridgeshire ; Hazlemere 

 in Surrey, and other places." The places here mentioned 

 are evidently named from the Hazel. 



The spreading roots of the Hazel are reckoned very 

 mischievous in a vineyard : 



Neve inter vites corylum sere." 



Virgil, Geoigic ii. 



" Plant no hazels among your vines." 



The goat also is an enemy to the vineyard, and on 

 that account was sacrificed by the Romans to Bacchus ; 

 and the entrails were roasted on hazel spits. They used 

 hazel twigs to bind the vines. 



Thomson, describing the birds preparing nests for their 

 young, says, 



