DECIDUOUS TREES. 
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expand for centuries after the tops are falling with decay. The 
knotted base of the old Tortsworth chestnut (supposed to date 
back to the time of the occupation of Britain by the Romans), is 
fifty-two feet in circumference at five feet from the ground ! It 
was so large as to be called the Great Chestnut of Tortsworth ” 
as early as A. D. 1135. The most noted chestnut trees in the 
world are the venerable trunks on Mount Etna, where the living 
shells of what are supposed once to have been solid trees, measure 
from sixty-four to one hundred and eighty feet in circumference 
near the root 1 
The chestnut was the favorite tree of the great master of the 
picturesque in landscape painting, Salvator Rosa, and flourished 
in the mountains of Calabria, where he painted. For decorative 
planting a noted English author, already quoted (Bose), thus 
speaks of it : — “ As an ornamental tree, the chestnut ought to be 
placed before the oak. Its beautiful leaves, which are never at- 
tacked by insects, and which hang on the trees till very late in 
autumn, mass better than those of the oak, and give more shade. 
An old chestnut standing alone produces a superb effect.” 
The leaves of the chestnut expand immediately after those of 
the horse-chestnut and maple, and a little earlier than those of the 
oak. They are from six to nine inches long, two to three inches 
wide, pointed, with scolloped edges, and of a warm green color. The 
flowers appear in July, when most trees have done blooming, and 
though not interesting or showy in themselves, the mass of them, 
mingling their yellowish white with the leaves, or rather projecting 
beyond the leaves, on the crown of the tree, fringe it with a rich 
golden color which is very effective, especially where relieved on a 
hill-side against the darker foliage of other trees. The foliage of 
this species of chestnut is rarely so dense and luxuriant as that of 
the horse-chestnuts or the sugar maple, but it divides at an earlier 
age into nobler masses. Everybody knows the fruit or nut j but 
everybody does not know what a great prickly burr encases it 
while growing, and, unluckily for the pleasure-grounds where a 
chestnut grows, falls with it, and endangers the feet of unwary 
children or the bodies of summer loungers in its shade. Yet these 
burrs add much to the beauty of the foliage by forming tufts of 
