123 
in Wilts, Hazelingfield in Cambridgeshire, Hazelmere 
in Surrey, and other places.” 
Besides furnishing material for a variety of useful 
purposes, from some supposed inherent virtue it sup¬ 
plied those celebrated divining rods which were used 
for the detection of minerals, and also of criminals 
guilty of murder. That superstition should give cre¬ 
dence to such a fable in Evelyn’s time, is not a matter 
of great surprise; but that such a notion should still 
prevail in some places, even in these days of boasted 
intellect, it were difficult to credit, were not the fact 
attested by competent authority. 
There are only two species of corylus,— our hazel, of 
which the filbert is merely a variety; and corylus 
colurna, the Byzantine nut. “ The hazel,” says Swin- 
burn, “ has the name Avellana from Avellino, a city 
of the kingdom of Naples, where it is much cultivated, 
and covers the whole face of the neighbouring valley, 
and in good years brings in a profit of sixty thousand 
ducats. The nuts are mostly of the large round filbert, 
which we call Spanish. They were originally brought 
into Italy from Pontus, and known amongst the Romans 
by the appellation of nux Pontica, which, in process of 
time, was changed into that of nux Avellana, from the 
