PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
338 
plank of the wood of the Walnut, 25 feet wide, upon which the 
Emperor Frederick III. had given a sumptuous banquet. In 
the Baidar Valley, near Balaclava, in the Crimea, stands a 
Walnut tree at least 1000 years old. It yields annually from 
80,000 to 100,000 Nuts, and belongs to five Tartar families, 
who share its produce equally.”— Gardener's Chroiiicle. 
The economic uses of the Walnut are now chiefly confined 
to the timber, which is highly prized both for furniture and 
gun-stocks, and to the production of oil, which is not much 
used in Europe, but is highly valued in the East. “ It dries 
much more slowly than any other distilled oil, and hence its 
great value, as it allows the artist as much time as he requires 
in order to blend his colours and finish his work. In con¬ 
junction with amber varnish it forms a vehicle which leaves 
nothing to be desired, and which doubtless was the vehicle 
of Van Eyck, and in many instances of the Venetian masters, 
and of Correggio.”— Arts of the Middle Ages , preface. In 
mediaeval times a high medicinal value was attached to the 
fruit, for the celebrated antidote against poison which was so 
firmly believed in, and which was attributed to Mithridates, 
King of Pontus, was chiefly composed of Walnuts. “Two 
Nuttes (he is speaking of Walnuts) and two Figges, and twenty 
Rewe leaves, stamped together with a little salt, and eaten 
fasting, doth defende a man from poison and from pestilence 
that day.”— Bullein, Governmente of Health, 1558. 
The Walnut holds an honoured place in heraldry. Two 
large Walnut trees overshadow the tomb of the poet Waller in 
Beaconsfield churchyard, and “ these are connected with a 
curious piece of family history. The tree was chosen as the 
Waller crest after Agincourt, where the head of the family took 
the Duke of Orleans prisoner, and took afterwards as his crest 
the arms of Orleans hanging by a label in a Walnut tree with 
this motto for the device : Hcec fructus virtutisA — Gardener's 
Chronicle , Aug. 1878. 
Walnuts are still very popular, though not as poison antidotes ; 
their popularity now rests on their use as pickles, their ex¬ 
cellence as autumn and winter dessert fruits, and with pseudo- 
