6 
AMERICAN CHESNÜT. 
the Olive to attempt its introduction into West Tennessee and the 
Southern States, it would afford an agreeable addition to the luxuries of 
the table. 
PLATE CIII. 
A branch with fruit of the natural size. Fig. 1, A barren flower. Fig. 2, 
A fertile floioer. Fig. 3, Fruit with the nut exposed. Fig. 4, A met with the 
kernel exposed. Fig. 5, A kernel without the pellicle. 
AMERICAN CHESNUT. 
Moncecia polyandria. Linn. Amentacece. Jirss. 
Castanea vesca. C. foliis lanceolatis , acuminatd-serratis, utrinquè glabris ; 
nucibus dimidio superiore villosis. 
The Chesnut does not venture beyond the 44th degree of latitude. It 
is found in New Hampshire between the 43d and the 44th degrees, but 
such is the severity of the winter, that it is less common than in Connecticut, 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It is most multiplied in the mountainous 
districts of the Carolinas and of Georgia, and abounds on the Cumberland 
Mountains and in East Tennessee. 
The coolness of the summer and the mildness of the winter in these 
regions are favorable to the Chesnut ; the face of the country, also, is per- 
fectly adapted to a tree which prefers the sides of mountains or their im- 
mediate vicinity, where the soil in general is gravelly, though deep enough 
to sustain its perfect development. The Chesnut of the Old World attains 
its greatest expansion in similar situations ; an example is said to exist on 
Mount Etna of a Chestnut 160 feet in circumference, or about 53 feet in 
diameter, and large enough to shelter 100 men on horseback beneath its 
branches ; but its trunk is hollowed by time almost to the bark : near it 
stand several others more than 75 feet in circumference- At Sancerre, in 
the Department of the Cher, 120 miles from Paris, there is a Chesnut 
which, at 6 feet from the ground, is 30 feet in circumference; 600 years 
ago it was called the Great Chesnut , and though it is supposed to be more 
than 1000 years old, its trunk is still perfectly sound, and its branches are 
