HORSE CHESTNUTS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20098, 29 November 1930, Page 19

HORSE CHESTNUTS.

lO THS BDITOS Of THE PRESS. Sir, —The following xs a gleaning from an old magazine in my possession, viz: the "Monthly Magazine," London, December Ist, 180*3. A correspondent had previously been enquiring as to the uses of the horse chestnut tree and the enclosed reply was published. It was the timber and shelter possibilities of these trees that caught my attention, which, if they attain to what is claimed for them, here, should be grown more extensively than they are. The Forestry League experts should be abJe to judge of their merits rightly. —Yours, etc., S. H. HEAD, November 28th, 1930. (Enclosure.) "William Ellis, of Hertfordshire, or, Uie 'Mature and Use of Foreign and British Timber,' Croats of the grafting, inoculatine character, and use of the horse chestnut tree r.nd observes . 'This trees was first brought from Constantinople to Vienna thenca into Italy, and so to France, but to us from the Levant. It flourishes so well in Eneland that we have ample encouragement t»

denizen other (strangers among in. It yearly •Tm a fruit for feeding deer and swine.' ' 'The nuts may be made much more nutritious and serviceable if they wero soaked in water; by this means thousands mnv be made agreeably sweet to cattle in a little time and for hardly any charge, that before were naturally bitter, and xvould not answer the purpose of fattening bo well. 'The sweet or Portugal chestnut tree is (next to oak) one of the moat Bought after by builders; it formerly furnished good part of tho timber in the ancient houses in London, and therefore it is thought to hare grown in great plenty in soma woods near the metropolis. "This sweet chestnut affords the best stakes and poles for palisadoes, pediments for vineprops, and hoops; also for mill-timber and water-works. ''lf water touch the roots of the growing trees it spoils both' fruit and timber. These trees are so prevalent against cold that where they stand they defend other plantations from injuries of the severest frost."