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344 PBUITS IN THEIB SEASON.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
" " ——"" The Walnut Traces Its Noble Gen...
entirely upon them for half the year . They undergo the preparation of being unhuskeddried with smoke , ground into flourand
, , then mixed with milk and made into " galettes , " a kind of pancake baked on an iron plate ; or into _" polenta / ' a species of porridge .
When _thoroLighly dried for two or three days on the floor of a kind of kilnpierced with holeshaving a smouldering fire beneath fed
, , with their own husks , they will keep good for several years , and this is the process followed at Limousin and Perigord . It is usual
to collect the nuts when ripe as they fall from the tree ; but if bad weather should set in the remainder are "beaten off at once with
long poles , and the husks are then trodden off _hy sabot-shod peasants , but when thus gathered they are fit only for immediate use .
Though employed only for food in Europe , a beverage is prepared from them in AfricaThunberg affirming that the Hottentots
em-, ploy the wild chestnuts growing in their country in a similar manner to what we do coffeethe nuts being first steeped in water , then
, boiled , and afterwards roasted , ground , and made into drink . . The fruit constitutes the chief commercial value of the tree , for
the wood is of very little use as timber , though at one time a contrary opinion was entertained as to its merits , founded on an erroneous
belief that it had been used for the roofs of many old cathedrals in France , of the Louvreand of our own "Westminster Hall . About
, the end of last century , the Society of Arts , under the influence of this mistake , strongly recommended the chestnut for cultivation ,
even offering rewards for planting it until the error was discovered , the great Buffon demonstrating that oak wood , after the _lajDse of
many years , assumes the appearance of chestnut , and Daubenton afterwards proving that in most of the cases mentioned the timber
that had been used was actually oak . For some purposes , however , it is really preferred to even that type of British toughness , and in
America , where the nuts , too , are considered to be sweeter than those of Europe , it is looked on as among the most useful wood in the forest ,
being largely used for posts and rails . It has now , too , the added interest of having been the tree selected to be planted by the heir
of British royalty , at the tomb of the great Washington . This wood has the singular property of being best when young ,
for after £ fty or sixty years , and often mucli sooner , it begins to decay at the heartand the corruption then spreads outwards until
, the whole trunk is consumed , and perishes . In the Cevennes this process is stayed by means of burning heath , in the hollow of the
tree , ( for the wood , which is therefore little esteemed as fuel , smoulders instead of blazing ) until the interior surface is charred
, , when it will survive many years if the operation has been carefully _jDerformed . The huge chestnut on Mount Etna , said to be the largest
tree in Europe , has but a mere shell of the trunk remaining , the heartwood having long since completeldecayed . This liability to internal
y disease drew on it the animadversion of Evelyn , who quaintly says— .
" I cannot celebrate this tree for its sincerity , it "being found that , con- .
344 Pbuits In Theib Season.
344 _PBUITS IN THEIB SEASON .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1861, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011861/page/56/
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