491 
till thoroughly seasoned, because it will shrink beyond expectation. It is not only good to confide 
in it much for beams or joists, because of its brittleness. 
Besides the uses of the wood, the fruit, when tender and very young, is used for preserves. It 
makes also food and oil: this last is of extraordinary use with the painter in whites and other deli¬ 
cate colours, also for gold size and varnish; and with this they polish walking-staves, and other 
works which are wrought in with burning. They fry with it in some places, and eat it in Berry 
instead of butter, of which they have little or none good; and therefore they plant infinite numbers 
of these trees all over that country: and the use of it to burn in lamps is common there. 
The very husks and leaves being macerated in warm water, and that liquor poured on grass- 
walks and bowling-greens, infallibly kills the worms, without endangering the grass.* Not that 
there is any thing peculiarly noxious in this decoction, but worms cannot bear the application of 
any thing bitter to their bodies, which is the reason that bitters, such as Gentian, are the best 
destroyers of worms lodged in the bowels of animals. Worms are seldom observed in the intestines 
of the human body, excepting in cases where the bile is either weak or deficient.*!* 
The dye made of this lixive will colour woods, hair and wool; and the green husks boiled, make 
a good colour to dye a dark yellow, without any mixture. 
The younger timber is held to make the better-coloured work; but the older, being more firm 
and close, is finer cambleted for ornament. Those trees which are raised from the thick-shelled 
fruit become the best timber; but the thin-shelled yield better fruit; 
Those nuts which come easily out of their husks should be laid to mellow in heaps, and the rest 
exposed in the sun till the shells dry, else the kernels will be apt to perish: some again preserve 
them in their own leaves, or in a chest made of walnut-tree wmod; others in sand, especially for a 
seminary. Old nuts are not wholesome till macerated in warm water; but if you bury them in the 
earth in pots, out of the reach of the air, and so as no vermin can attack them, they will keep mar¬ 
vellously plump the whole year about, and may easily be blanched. In Spain, they strew the 
gratings of old and hard nuts, first peeled, into their tarts and other meats. For the oil, one bushel 
of nuts will yield fifteen pounds of peeled and clear kernels, and that half as much oil, which the 
sooner it is drawn, is the more in quantity, though the drier the nut, the better in quality: the lees 
or marc of the pressing is excellent to fatten hogs with. After the nuts are beaten down, the leaves 
should be sweeped into heaps, and carried away, because their extreme bitterness impairs the 
ground. % 
We are not certain of the native place of growth of the Walnut-tree. It is not an aboriginal of 
Europe, and there is little doubt but that it came into Italy from Greece, and into Greece from 
some part of Asia. Some authors take it for the Nux Persica of Theophrastus; Pliny (1.15. c. 24.) 
says, it w 7 as brought from Persia by the kings; and on the authority of Lerche it is now set down 
as native of Persia in the later works of Linnaeus. According to Loureiro, it is found wild in the 
northern provinces of China. 
It is much cultivated in some parts of Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland. Burgundy, 
says Mr. Evelyn, abounds with Walnut-trees, where they stand in the midst of goodly wheat lands, 
at sixty and a hundred feet distance, and so far are they from hurting the crop, that they are looked 
upon as great preservers by keeping the ground warm, nor do the roots hinder the plough. When¬ 
ever they fell a tree, which is only the old and decayed, they always plant a young one near him. 
In several places betwixt Hanau and Frankfort in Germany, no young farmer is permitted to marry 
* Sylva, 174, 175, 177, 178. ed Hunt. 
*f* Dr. Hunter's note, p. 178. 
t Sylva, 178, 179- 
