CHESNUT, or CHESTNUT. This tree is available for a great variety of uses in the arts and domestic economy. There are two kinds—tbe Sweet Chesnut and the Horse Ches nut.
The Sweet Chesnut is in most cases culti vated more for its fruit than for any other purpose. In England the ehesnut is eaten in many ways—raw, roasted, stewed with cream, made into soup either with milk or gravy, stewed with salt-fish, or used as a stuff ing for fowls and turkey. Evelyn speaks of the chesnut as being lusty and masculine food for rustics at all times, and of better nourish ment for husbandmen than kale or rusty bacon ; yea, or beans to hoot.' In the south of France and the north of Italy, chesnuts serve in a great measure as a substitute for bread and potatoes. The nuts laid by for winter vegetable are those which fall off the trees; while those which are beaten off are carried to Paris and other largo towns for immediate use. As a means of depriving the nuts of their husks, they are trodden under foot by men wearing sabots or wooden shoes. Chesnuts are dried in France, and preserved for many years ; they are dried by the air, by the sun's heat, by a kilo, or by partial boiling, according to the mode in which they are to be used. The French make many dishes from chesnuts. Galette is a thick flat cake made with chesnut-meal, milk, salt, and sometimes a little butter and eggs, and baked on a hot stone or iron plate'; polenta is a thick porridge made by boiling the chesnut. meal in water or
milk, and stirring it till it forms a thick paste, something like the oatmeal parritch of the Scotch ; chatigna is made by boiling the nuts whole, without their skins, in water with a little salt, till they become soft, and then mixing them up like mashed potatoes ; marrow glace is made by dipping the nuts into clarified sugar, and then drying them. The nuts are also frequently cooked by boiling them in Water containing the leaves of celery or sage.
The timber of the sweet or Spanish dies nut is much used for posts, fences, stakes, hoops, &c. The wood is more fitted for such purposes than for beams or planks, as it is liable to become rent with fissures. It is used in France for making wine-casks ; and for many purposes where most other woods would decay, chesnut timber is found very desirable.
In respect to the Horse-Chesnut, the fruit is eaten by animals ; the meal is used in some places to whiten flaxen cloth, in others to strengthen bookbinders' paste ; and in France attempts have been made to produce sugar and spirit from it. The timber is used for flooring, cart linings, sabots, packing- cases, and water-pipes ; on being burned it yields good charcoal and potash. The bark is used in tanning, in dyeing, and as a drug.
There were 63,033 bushels of Spanish ches nuts (as the fruit of the sweet chesnut is called) imported in 1848.