WALNUT TREE. 



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Her timber is for various uses good ; 



The carver she supplies with lasting wood : 



She makes the painter's fading colours last : 



A table she aflPords us, and repast ; 



E'en while we feast, her oil our lamp supplies ; 



The rankest poison by her virtue dies. 



The mad dog's foam, and taint of raging skies. 



The Pontic king who lived where poisons grew. 



Skilful in antidotes, her virtues knew; 



Yet envious fates, that still with merit strive. 



And man, ungrateful, from the orchard drive 



This sovereign plant ; excluded from the field, 



Unless some useless nook a station yield. 



Defenceless in the common road she stands. 



Exposed to restless war of vulgar hands : 



By neighbouring clowns and passing rabble torn. 



Battered with stones by boys, and left forlorn." 



Cowley's Plants, book v. 



Evelyn, speaking of the virtues of the Walnut here 

 recounted by Cowley, goes so far as to say, that if the 

 kernel, being a little masticated, be laid to the bite of a 

 mad dog for three hours, and then cast to poultry, they 

 will die if they eat of it. Of its shade he says, that it has 

 been causelessly defamed; that the scent of the fallen 

 leaves may have proved noxious to some persons, but 

 while fresh, and on the tree, never. 



Virgil forms a judgment of the future harvest by the 

 appearance of the Walnut tree in the spring. 



Conteraplator item, quum se nux plurima silvis 

 Induct in florera, et ramos curvabit olentes : 

 Si superant foetus, pariter frumenta sequentur. 

 Magnaque cum magno veniet tritura calore. 

 At si luxuria foliorum exuberat umbra, 

 Nequicquam pingues palea teret area cuhnos." 



Georg. i. 



