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With regard to soil, the chestnut is rather fastidious, as, though it will exist fora time, it rarely thrives on soils of a chalky or limy’ nature, and will not grow in stiff clay or in peaty soil.

All the largest I have seen are on greensand or old red sandstone; and when cultivated for coppice-wood, which is probably its best economic use, it requires a better soil and climate than any other tree usually so treated. It is propagated by seed, which ripens in the southern counties abundantly in good seasons, though the fruit is inferior in size and quality to what is imported from Spain and France. The largest nuts should be chosen and kept dry in sand until spring, as they are devoured by mice, and if sown in autumn are liable to rot if exposed to much frost and wet. They should be transplanted when one year old and kept rather crowded in the nursery until they are 5 to 6 feet high, as they are liable to become very bushy if they have room to spread. They are not difficult to transplant, if grown in light soil, but must not be left more than two years before transplanting.’

A remarkable instance of the grafting of the chestnut on the oak * was shown me in the Botanic Garden of Dijon in France by M. Genty, the professor of botany there. The history of this tree is given in full by M.A. Baudot, in a pamphlet published at Dijon in 1907, from which I gather that in 1835 some acorns of the pedunculate oak were sown by M. Meline, five of which were grafted in 1839 with scions from the chestnut. Three of the grafts failed to take, another was injured by wind, the fifth pushed a shoot in the first year about 4 feet long, and grew so vigorously that it is now nearly 4o feet high with a girth of 44 feet. The tree bore small fruit in 1852; and in 1903 some were sown, which germinated and produced three young plants, of which two are now planted out in the garden at Dijon, and a third was sent to M. M. de Vilmorin at Les Barres.

The varieties of the chestnut grown for fruit are usually grafted in French nurseries, but are rarely planted in England at present so far as I have seen.

As coppice-wood the chestnut is principally found in the hop-growing districts of Kent, Sussex, and Hants, where, until wiring was introduced, it was one of the most valuable products of English woodland, being cut at intervals of 8 to 12 years and realising frequently £2 to £3 per acre per annum. But now, though still more valuable than ash or hazel, it has fallen so much in price that these coppices are not as carefully managed as they used to be; and the split poles, which are so largely used for fencing, are said to be imported from France. In such coppices the stools are at 5 to 6 feet apart, because the thinner a hop pole is in proportion to its height the

1 Fliche and Grandeau (Ann. Chémie et Physique, 1874, p. 354) proved by experiments, that the presence of a consider- able amount of lime in the soil causes the chestnut to languish or to die, as too little iron is absorbed by the tree, and the normal function of the chlorophyll is deleteriously affected. Alphonse de Candolle, in Nuovo Giorn. Bot. Ital. x. 228 (1878), states that the chestnut is never found growing in Switzerland on limestone, and that in places where it is believed to occur on limestone, careful examination shows that the roots are surrounded by siliceous soil. However, he brings forward evidence to show that in the climate of south-eastern Europe, as in Hungary and Istria, the chestnut is occasionally found thriving on pure limestone.

2 Sir H. Maxwell recommends sowing the best foreign nuts, but these produce seedlings which in my nursery are much more tender when young, than those raised from smaller English-grown seed, and when required for timber trees I should prefer the latter,

3 M. Trabut, in his pamphlet, Le chataignier en Algérie, published as bulletin 37, by the Department of Agriculture in Algeria, states that he saw at the Villa Thuret in Antibes, a fine chestnut, which had been grafted on Quercus Mirbeckii.