CHAPTER IV.

CHESNUT, BEECH, ELM, ASH, SERVICE.

CHESNUT AND BEECH-(FAGUS).

THESE are both very valuable as timber trees, the first for the firmness and durability of its timber when exposed to the air; and the second for the many purposes to which it is applied, and its durability in water.

The Chesnut tree (Fagus castanea) is generally understood to be a native of Asia, in many parts of which it is to be found in situations where it is not very likely to have been planted. Tradition says

that it was brought from Asia Minor, by the Emperor Tiberius, and that it soon spread all over the warmer parts of Europe. At present, it is very abundant, as a native tree, in the mountainous parts of the south of Europe; and it is also found in North America, from New York to Carolina. The Castagno de cento cavalli, or chesnut of the hundred horses, upon Mount Etna, is probably the largest tree in Europe, being more than two hundred feet in circumference. Brydone, a traveller who wrote about fifty years ago, has given a particular description of this celebrated tree :—

"From this place it is not less than five or six miles to the great chesnut trees, through forests growing out of the lava, in several places almost impassable. Of these trees there are many of an enormous size, but the Castagno de cento cavalli is by much the most celebrated. I have even found it marked in an old map of Sicily, published near an hundred years ago; and in all the maps of Etna and its environs, it makes a very conspicuous figure. I own I

was by no means struck with its appearance, as it does not seem to be one tree, but a bush of five large

trees growing together. We complained to our guides of the imposition; when they unanimously assured us, that by the universal tradition, and even testimony of the country, all these were once united in one

stem; that their grandfathers once remembered this, when it was looked upon as the glory of the forest, and visited from all quarters; that for many years past, it had been reduced to the venerable ruin we beheld. We began to examine it with more attention, and found that there is an appearance that these five trees were really once united in one. The opening in the middle is at present prodigious; and it does, indeed, require faith to believe that so vast a space was once occupied by solid timber. But there is no appearance of bark on the inside of any of the stumps, nor on the sides that are opposite to one another. Mr. Glover and I measured it separately, and brought it exactly to the same size, viz. two hundred and four feet round. If this was once united in one solid stem, it must with justice, indeed, have been looked upon as a very wonderful phenomenon in the vegetable world, and deservedly styled the glory of the forest. I have since been told by the Canonico Recupero, an ingenious ecclesiastic of this place, that he was at the expense of carrying up peasants with tools to dig round the Castagno de cento cavalli, and he assures me, upon his honour, that he found all these stems united below ground in one root. I alleged that so extraordinary an object must have been celebrated by many of their writers; he told me that it had, and produced several examples."

In most parts of Britain the chesnut thrives well, there being authenticated anecdotes of many very large ones, in various parts of England and Ireland. Nor is it confined to the southern parts of the islands, for there is one in the garden at Castle Leod, in Ross-shire, which measures at least fifteen feet in circumference, and which, only a few years ago, shewed no signs of decay. Nor is it by any means a slow-growing tree; for in Kensington Gardens, and other places, where it has been planted along with elms and other

trees of very inferior timber, it equals them both in height and diameter. If the symptoms of decay that are apparent in some of those trees, of which the age is known not much to exceed a hundred years, are to be taken as evidence of the general failure of the tree, and not of its being in a situation indifferently adapted for it, we should be led to question the great antiquity which has been assigned to some of the chesnut trees in England. The lives of trees must,

however, like those of animals, vary with the situations in which they are placed; and the immense size of the celebrated chesnuts must lead us to assign to them a much longer duration than belongs to some others of the same species.

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Though none of the English chesnuts rival the great one on Mount Etna, yet this country possesses immense trees. That at Hitchin Priory, in, Hertfordshire, had, in 1789, a circumference of more than fourteen yards at five feet from the ground, and though the internal part was decayed and hollowed by time, the external part and the leaves were vigorous. Grose found one of four chesnuts in the garden at Great Cranford Park, Dorset, thirty-seven feet in circumference; and though shattered and decayed, it still bore good crops of fruit. In Gloucestershire, there was a chesnut, in the hollow of which was a pretty wainscoted room, enlightened with windows, and furnished with seats;" and the great chesnut at Tortworth, in the same county, had dimensions, and a reputed age, belonging to no other English tree. In the year 1150, it was styled the great old chesnut tree. In 1720, it measured fifty-one feet at six feet from the ground; but Lysons, by a later mensuration, 1791, made it only forty-five feet three inches. It bore fruit abundantly in 1788; and tradition carries its origin back to the days of the Saxon Egbert.

The chesnut tree is very ornamental when growing; and it makes excellent timber. In extreme age, too, its timber is not so valuable as when of a moderate size. One advantage of chesnut is, that there is very little sap-wood; and thus, in the growing state, it contains much more timber of a durable quality than an oak of the same dimensions.

In the Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1789, there is an account of the comparative durability of oak and chesnut, when used for posts. Posts of chesnut, and others of oak, had been put down at Wellington, in Somersetshire, previous to 1745. About 1763, when they had to undergo repair, the oak posts were found to be unserviceable, but the chesnut were very little worn. Accordingly, the oak ones were replaced by new, and the chesnut allowed to remain. In twenty-five years, (1788) the chesnut posts which had stood about twice as long as the oak, were found in much better condition than those. In 1772, a fence was made, partly of oak posts and rails, and partly of chesnut. The trees made use of were of the same age, and they were what may be termed young trees. In nineteen years, the oak posts had so decayed at the surface as to need to be strengthened by spurs, while the chesnut ones required no such support. A gate-post of chesnut, on which the gate had swung fifty-two years, was found quite sound when taken up; and a barn, constructed of chesnut in 1743, was found sound in every part in 1792. It should seem, therefore, that young chesnut is superior to young oak, for all manner of wood work that has to be partly in the ground. We have not heard of any case in which it has been tried against larch.

Chesnut trees of full growth were more abundant in England than they are now; the timber was used