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insects. Old Chesnut is very brittle, and apt to crack, and therefore should never stand longer than 
whilst it is in a growing state. If cut when it squares only six inches, it will be as durable as Oak 
of six times its size and age; having very little sap in proportion to other trees. The durability of it 
when exposed to the weather is sufficiently ascertained, from its use for gate-posts at Wellington in 
Somersetshire, of which the following is an account. In or about the year 1763, some gate-posts of 
Oak, and others of Chesnut were to be repaired; they had the appearance of being put in at the same 
time, but the latter were much more sound, insomuch that some of them were adjudged good enough 
to remain as gate-posts, and are now to be seen there (1788). Such as were too small were taken up, 
and set as posts to fix rails to. At the same time some new posts of Oak were put in, there not 
being enough of the old Chesnut posts. Though these were old when put in, twenty-five years ago, 
they are now (l 788) more sound than the Oak posts which were then new. One side of the Chesnut 
posts was the outside of the tree, but the timber is as sound there as in any other part; which would 
not have been the ease wfith Oak, the sap of wffiich, next the bark, soon decays. The Chesnut gate¬ 
posts had been put down many years before 1745 ; they have therefore probably stood the weather 
above half a century.* 
Another account says, that the branch of a Chesnut about thirteen inches square, which in the 
year 1726 was put down as a hanging post for a gate, and carried the gate fifty-two years, when 
taken up appeared perfectly sound, and was put down for a clapping-post in another place. 
In 1743 a large barn was built with some of this timber, and is now (1792) sound in every part. 
About the same time several posts and rails were put down, which after standing thirty or forty 
years, generally appeared so sound, as to admit of being set up in some other place. 
In 1772 a fence was made of posts and rails converted from young Oaks and Chesnuts of the same 
age and scantling. In ] 791 this fence was removed, when the Chesnut posts were found as sound as 
when they were first put down; but those of Oak were so much wasted just below the surface of the 
ground, that they could not be used again without a spur.q* 
The nuts are the usual, and in some places almost the only food of the common people in the 
Apennine mountains of Italy, in Savoy, and some parts of the South of France; not only boiled and 
roasted, but also in puddings, cakes and bread. They are esteemed to be a very flatulent diet, and 
hard of digestion; yet there are instances in Italy of men’s living to ninety or a hundred years of age, 
who have fed wholly on Chesnuts. They are brought even to fashionable tables in deserts. Mr. 
Ray mentions that they are eaten in Italy with orange or lemon juice and sugar; and that they are 
commonly sold there about the streets, roasted on a portable furnace; whence we may conclude that 
this luxury was unknown at London in the last century. These nuts are used for whitening linen 
cloth, and for making starch; they are reputed excellent for feeding hogs. The leaves also make use¬ 
ful litter, and mixed with the dung of the cattle are a good manure.{ 
The foregoing account will, I hope, have some tendency to encourage the growth of this noble, 
though neglected tree. Mr. Peter Collinson, who made no doubt of its being a native, assigned the 
great profits arising from Chesnuts when cut for hop-poles as the reason why it is so rare to see large 
trees in the woods.§ Let us hope, however, to see it rear its head again as a timber tree among us. 
An arret of the council at Paris was published in May in 1720, ordering that all the great roads in 
France should be planted with Chesnut or other such fruit or forest-trees as are suitable to the 
nature of the ground, at thirty feet distance from each other, and within six feet of the top 
of the ditch.|| 
* Transact. Soc, of Arts for 1789, p. 10, &c. + Ibid * for 1792, p- 30 . 
t Boutcher. § Gent. Magazine. || M. S. Ord. 
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