CHAP. CV.

coryla'ceai. co'rylus.

2021

Douster Swivel, in the Antiquary, use a hazel twig as a divining-rod ; and se-veral instances are mentioned, in different volumes of the Gentleman’s Magazine,of divining-rods having been in use in England as late. as the beginning ofthe eighteenth century. The following passage, quoted in the Mirror ( vol. xxi.p. 58.), and said to have been found written in an old edition of Ovid’s Meta­ morphoses , published in 1640, will show the manner in which the divining-rod was used about that period : — “ The finding of gold which is under theearth, as of all other mines of metal, is almost miraculous. They cut up aground hazel of a twelvemonth’s growth, which divides above into a fork,holding the one branch in the right hand, and the other in the left, not heldtoo slightly, or too strictly. When passing over a mine, or any other placewhere gold or silver is hidden, it will discover the same by bowing down vio-lently ; a common experiment in Germany , — not proceeding from any incan-tation, but a natural sympathy, as iron is attracted by the loadstone.” Therods of Saracens and magicians, according to the Dictionnaire des Eaux et Forets,were also of hazel. Numerous other virtues were anciently attributed to hazelrods. The ashes of the shells of its nuts, applied to the back of a child’s head,were supposed to turn the child’s eyes from grey to black; and Parkinson says, “ Some doe hold that these nuts, and not wallnuts, with figs and rue, wasMithridates ’ medicine, effectuall against poysons. The oyle of the nuts is effec-tuall for the same purposes.” He also says that, “ if a snake be stroke withan hasell wand, it doth sooner stunne it, than with any other strike; becauseit is so pliant, that it will winde closer about it; so that, being deprived of theirmotion, they must needs dye with paine and want; and it is no hard matter,in like manner, saith Tragus, to kill a mad dog that shall be strook with anhazel sticke, such as men use to walke or ride withall.” ( Theat. of Plants,p. 1416.) Evelyn says that the “ venerable and sacred fabric of Glastonbury,founded by Joseph of Arimathea , is storied to have been first composed of afew hazel rods interwoven about a few stakes driven into the ground.” Thenut has been cultivated for its fruit since the time of the Romans; who,according to Sir William Temple , called Scotland Caledonia, from Cal-Dun,the hill of hazel. On the Continent , the hazel is grown in large quantitiesin Spain , and in some parts of Italy ; and the fruit from the former countryis celebrated throughout Europe . In Great Britain , it is most extensivelycultivated in Kent; and, the produce being easily sent every where, and notsuffering either by carriage or keeping, the tree is not much grown for its fruitin private gardens.

Poetical and legendary Allusions. Virgil alludes to the hazel in his Georgies,as we have before mentioned (p. 2020.); and again in his Eclogues , giving itthe epithets of hard and dense. The hazel, however, was not nearly so greata favourite with the Latin poets as with those of the middle ages. The trou-badours, and old French romance writers, have scarcely a song that does notallude to the hazel bush or hazel nut. Our own poets have also been lavishon the same theme. Cowley mentions that the hazel is the favourite resortof the squirrel; —

. - .. “ Upon whose nutty top

A squirrel sits, and wants no other shadeThan what by his own spreading tail is made.

He culls the soundest, dext’rously picks out

The kernels sweet, and throws the shells about.” :

Thomson, in his Spring, describes birds as building

-- “ Among the roots

Of hazel, pendent o’er the plaintive stream

and, in his Autumn, the lover searching for “ the clustering nuts” for his fail-one ; and, when he finds them,—

-“ Amid the secret shade

And where they burnish on the topmost bough,

With active vigour crushes down the tree ;

Or shakes them ripe from the resigning husk,

A glossy shower, and of an ardent brown.”

6 p 4

Seasons.