218 
A DISH OP NUTS. 
[Nature and Art, December 1, 1886. 
United Kingdom is exceedingly large, as, in addi- 
tion to those of home production, 125,659 bushels 
were imported in the year 1864. 
Shakspeare, in “ Macbeth,” shows its the envy 
excited in the breast of the witch at the lapful 
of chestnuts held by the sailor’s wife. Phillips 
says : — 
“ In Catalonia a custom prevails of people going from 
house to house on All Saints eve, believing that by every 
chestnut that they eat in a different house they will free a 
soul from Purgatory.” 
The period at which the walnut was first intro- 
duced in England appears to be uncertain. It is 
said to have been cultivated by the Romans before 
the death of the Emperor Tiberius, and is stated 
to have been brought from Greece by Vi tel l i us. 
Strabo states that, at one time, in Rome, tables of 
walnut-wood sold at a higher price than those of 
citron. From a poem entitled Be JLuce, written 
by Ovid, it appears that at marriages walnuts 
were thrown amongst the assembled children by 
the bride and bridegroom ; and it has been sug- 
gested that ceremony was instituted to show that 
the bridegroom now cast aside his boyish amuse- 
ments, or that the bride was no longer a votary of 
Diana. 
“ Now bar the door. The bridegroom puts 
The eager boys to gather nuts.” 
It has also been suggested that the French term for 
nuptials des JVoces might have been derived from 
this ancient custom. 
We read that in 530, St. Medard, bishop of Uoyon, 
instituted a festival, entitled La Rosiere, at Salency, 
his birthplace, for adjudging annually the prize of 
a crown of roses to the girl who should be ac- 
knowledged by all her competitors to be the most 
amiable, modest, and dutiful in the village ; and 
he had the pleasure of crowning his own sister as 
the first Rose Queen. It was also, it appears, an 
important pax’t of the proceedings to formally pre- 
sent the newly-made Floral Queen with offerings 
of ripe walnuts and other fruits. We may judge 
from the following extract, that much importance 
was in Evelyn’s day attached to the cultivation of 
the walnut-tree on the continent of Europe : — 
“ Burgundy abounds with them, where they stand in the 
midst of goodly wheat lands, at sixty and an hundred foot 
distance ; and it is so far from hurting the crop, that they 
look on them as a great preserver, by keeping the ground 
warm ; nor do the roots hinder the plow. Whenever they 
fell a tree (which is only the old and decayed) they always 
plant a young one near him ; and in several places ’twixt 
Hanaw and Francfort, in Germany, no young farmer what- 
soever is permitted to marry a wife till he bring proof that 
he hath planted and is a father of such a stated number of 
walnut-trees, as the law is inviolably observed to this day, 
for the extraordinary benefit which this tree affords the 
inhabitants.” 
The Government authorities in this country 
have, from time to time, caused large numbers of 
young walnut-trees to be planted in the neighbour- 
hood of the various public works, in order that 
they might be made use of for gun-stocks, for 
which purpose the wood is peculiarly excellent. 
It appears, from a calculation made in 1806, that 
the manufactures of muskets in this country con- 
sumed annually 12,000 large trees. 
And such was the panic caused in France by a 
disease having appeared amongst the walnut-trees, 
that, fearing a great scarcity of the timber, an act was 
passed in 1720, prohibiting its exportation under 
pain of confiscation and a fine of 3,000 livres. In 
these days of Volunteers and rifles, vast quantities 
of walnut timber are required to keep pace with 
the demand ; and many foreign sources — the Black 
Sea and American ports amongst them- — have been 
opened up for that purpose ; and it is not probable 
that such a price as £600 will ever again in this 
kingdom be paid for one walnut-tree. This 
amount, we are informed, was once given. 
Collinson, in his “ History of Somersetshire,” 
when speaking of the Glastonbury thorn, says : 
“ There grew also in the Abbey churchyard, on the south 
side of St. Joseph’s Chapel, a marvellous walnut-tree, which 
never budded forth before the feast of St. Barnabas (the 
11th of June), and on that very day shot forth its leaves, 
and flourished like other trees of the same speoies.” 
He also informs us that this tree was much 
sought after by the credulous ; and that Queen 
Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of 
the realm, even when times of monkish superstition 
had ceased, gave large sums of money for small 
cuttings. 
There are several varieties of walnuts grown in 
different districts in England; amongst them may be 
mentioned the kind known as the “ Highflyer,” or 
Thetford nut ; the fern-leaved ; the thin-shelled, or 
titmouse walnut (so called from the shell being 
thin enough for the titmice to eat through it) ; and 
the huge Nux Juglans fructu maximo , known as 
the Warwickshire walnut. Many very charming 
little presents are ingeniously packed in the shells 
of these ; and, if reports speak truly, they have 
often been the medium through which delicate kid 
gloves were transported free of duty. The pur- 
poses to which the wood of the walnut is applied 
are almost endless, and many of them are too well 
known to need comment. 
In Tartary, and on some portions of the coast of 
southern Russia, it is a common practice to tap the 
walnut-trees for the purpose of obtaining the sap 
with a view to the manufacture of sugar. This is 
done much as the American settlers obtain their 
maple sugar. Holes are bored in the trees when 
the sap is rising. A convenient spout of bark is 
inserted, which carries the liquid as it flows into a 
pot or other vessel placed to receive it. This is 
afterwards boiled and crystallized roughly for use. 
Many of the trees which we examined on the 
southern Russian coasts had been thus treated. 
Wine is made also from the juice by subjecting it 
to fermentation, whilst by distillation a strong Spirit 
is obtained. Perhaps the largest walnut-trees in 
the world are to be found in Crim Tartary. Large 
quantities of oil are obtained from the kernels of 
walnuts, and, in a commercial point of view, its 
obtainment is more important than any of the 
other purposes to which the nut is applied in the 
districts in which it is grown. When the proper 
