The European chestnut has been so frequently and extensively referred to by ancient and modern authors that it would not be at all difficult to fill a large volume with brief extracts from their works, but my aim is not so much to show what has been done with this nut in other countries as what we may do with it here. All nations who have any experience with it admit its value as food for many wild and domesticated animals, as well as for the human race, and we know, from our long experience with the native species, that it is highly esteemed wherever known, although it must be admitted that our sparse population and the abundance of other kinds of food, have tended to make us careless and neglectful of the indigenous chestnut. It may be well, before dismissing this brief history of the chestnut, to add that while nearly all the ancient authors, in referring to it, employed its present scientific name of _Castanea_, still, when botanists first attempted what has since been recognized as the scientific classification of plants, many of them placed the chestnut in the same genus as the beech, retaining the generic name of _Fagus_ for both. Linnæus, in his _Systema Naturæ_, 1766, Vol. II, p. 630, describes two species of the chestnut and one of beech in the genus _Fagus_, although Tournefort, in his "History of Plants Growing About Paris," published seventy years before that of Linnæus, had recognized the distinctive characteristics of these two groups of nut trees, and he adopted the present name of _Castanea_ for the generic name of the chestnut, and _Fagus_ for that of the beech. But nearly all of the English and earlier American botanists adopted and followed Linnæus in his classification, ignoring the works of the earlier as well as contemporaneous continental botanists. I merely refer to this matter of botanical nomenclature because some of my readers may have occasion to consult the earlier authors who describe American plants, as, for instance, such works as John Clayton's "Flora of Virginia," 1739, Thomas Walter's "Flora Caroliniana," 1787, or Humphrey Marshall's "American Grove," 1785. In all of these, and others, the chestnut is described as a species of beech (_Fagus_). =Propagation of the Chestnut.=--The usual mode of propagating the chestnut is from seed, when trees are wanted for general planting or for stocks upon which to graft improved and rare varieties. Under some conditions and circumstances, it is best to plant the nuts soon after they are ripe in autumn, and this appears to be the most natural method; in fact, it is the way in which forests have been produced and are constantly renewed and perpetuated, when man does not interfere to prevent it. But nature is in no hurry in such matters, while man always is, because his time is limited; consequently, in our attempts at the multiplication and cultivation of plants we aim to save both time and material, therefore cannot afford to adopt nature's slow and wasteful processes.