Ryce, rice, or ris, properly means a long-branch; and the word is still used in that sense in the West of England. Dr. Bulleyn shews there were plenty of good native cherries at Ketteringham, near Norwich; pears, called the Blackfriars, in and about that city; and excellent grapes at Blaxhall in Suffolk, where he was rector from 1550 to 1554.] CHESNUTS.—The Romans had six sorts, some more easily separated from the skin than others, and one with a red skin. They roasted them as we do. [The chesnut, _castanea_, is a native of the South of Europe, and is said to take its name from Castanea, a city of Thessaly, where anciently it grew in great plenty. Gerard says that in his time there were several woods of chesnuts in England, particularly one near Feversham, in Kent; and Fitz-Stephen, in a description of London, written by him in Henry the second’s time, speaks of a very noble forest which grew on the north side of it. This tree grows sometimes to an amazing size. There is one at Lord Ducie’s at Tortworth, in the county of Gloucester, which measures 19 yards in circumference, and is mentioned by Sir Robert Atkyns, in his History of that County, as a famous tree in King John’s time; and by Mr. Evelyn in his Sylva, to have been so remarkable for its magnitude in the reign of King Stephen, as then to be called the great chesnut of Tortworth; from which it may be reasonably supposed to have been standing before the conquest. Lord Ducie had a drawing of it taken and engraved in 1772. Formerly a great part of London was built with chesnut and walnut timber.] The Horse Chesnut was brought from the northern parts of Asia into Europe, about the year 1550, and was sent to Vienna, about the year 1558. From Vienna it migrated into Italy and France: but it comes to us from the Levant immediately. Gerard in his Herbal, printed in 1597, speaks of it only as a foreign Tree. In Johnson’s edition of the same Work printed in 1633, it is said, “Horse Chesnut groweth in Italy, and in sundry places of the East Country; it is now growing with Mr. Tradescant at South Lambeth.” Parkinson says “our Christian World had first the knowledge of it from Constantinople.”—The same Author places the Horse Chesnut in his Orchard, as a fruit tree between the Walnut and the Mulberry. How little it was then known, 1629, may be inferred from his saying not only that it is of a greater and more pleasant aspect, for the fair leaves, but also of a good use for the fruit, which is of a sweet taste, roasted and eaten as the ordinary sort.—This tree does not seem to have been so common a hundred years ago as it is now. Mr. Houghton (1700) mentions some at Sir William Ashhurst’s at Highgate, and especially at the Bishop of London’s at Fulham. Those now standing at Chelsea College were then very young. There was also a very fine one in the Pest-house garden near Old-Street, and another not far from the Ice-house under the shadow of the Observatory in Greenwich Park.