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who wrote some years afterwards, says, “ In divers places of Kent, as in andabout Gravesend, in the countrey, and elsewhere, very many prime timbers oftheir old barns and houses are of chestnut wood; and yet there is now scarcea chestnut tree within 20 miles of the place, and the people altogether ignorantof such trees. This sheweth that in former tiiqes those places did aboundwith such timber.” {Legacy, &C-, p. 18.) A proof how early the idea pre-vailed of the wood of C2uercus sessiliflora being that of the chestnut. Inthe year 1676, an ancestor of the family of Wyndham of Felbrigg, in Nor-folk, was said to be a great planter of chestnuts; and some account of histrees will be found in a succeeding page. The tree, however, was compara-tively neglected, till towards the latter end of the last century; when theSociety of Arts, reviving the idea (which, as we have seen above, was cur-rent as long ago as the time of Henry VIII.), that the carpentry of many ofour old buildings consisted of chestnut wood, offered rewards for planting thetree ; and these were given to a number of individuals who made plantationsof it. The tree is now chiefly planted as coppice-wood and for its fruit inEngland, and as an ornamental tree in Scotland and Ireland. In England, itis chiefly planted in hop countries, and on the margins of orchards, as a fruittree. There are considerable plantations of it in Devonshire, from which largequantities of fruit are sent to the London market.

In France, as in Britain, it was formerly believed that the timber in theroofs of the oldest cathedrals, and in the Louvre and other buildings, was ofchestnut; and it was thought, in consequence, that the tree had, in formertimes, been much more abundant in France than it now is in that country.Buflbn, however, demonstrated that oak wood, after a great number of years,puts on the appearance of that of the chestnut; and, afterwards, Daubenton,as we have seen (p. 1787.), set the question at rest, by showing that what hadbeen taken for chestnut was Q. sessiliflora. At the same time, it is observedin the Dictionnaire des Eanx et Forets, that chestnut trees must formerly havebeen much more common in France than at present; because orchards ofthem are often referred to under the name of chataigneraies in ancient writings ;and Acosta reports that the groves of chestnut trees in France were almosttotally destroyed in 1709, by a very severe frost, which followed suddenly afterheavy rains. In the Dictionnaire Univcrsel (published at Lyons in 1791, art.Chataignier), it is stated, from the records of the city of Orleans, that “ theForest of Orleans has been observed to change alternately the species of itstimber; to have been for a space of time in oak, then in chestnut, and after-

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