"How would such publick plantations improve the glory and wealth of a nation! but where shall we find the spirits among our countrymen? Yes, I will adventure to instance in those plantations of Sir Richard Bidolph upon the downs near Letherhead in Surry; Sir Robert Clayton at Morden near Godstone, and so about Cassaulton [Casehorton], where many thousands of these trees do celebrate the industry of the owners, and will certainly reward it with infinite improvement, as I am assured they do in part already, and that very considerably; besides the ornament which they afford to those pleasant tracts." It is curious to find Evelyn, who infused a fair proportion of scientific scepticism into his practical treatise, lending credence to some of the mythical virtues of the walnut. Thus he gravely writes that "the distillation of the leaves with honey and urine makes hair spring on bald heads." In raising this tree from seed the walnuts offered for sale as food should be avoided, for these generally have been kiln-dried, and their vitality, as well as their flavour, thereby impaired or destroyed. Nuts should be selected from large trees of the best habit, laid in sand during the winter and sown in February. They are rather ticklish plants to handle in the nursery, owing to the long bare tap-root which they send down, and which should be shortened when the seedlings are transplanted, as they should be at a year old. If fine timber be the object, the young trees when planted out should be stimulated to upward growth by the presence of other trees as nurses. A very slight spring frost suffices to destroy the young growth; but the walnut generally escapes that risk by being the latest of all our woodland trees, except the ash, to put forth leaves. I do not remember to have seen the young leaves appear so early as they did in the remarkable spring of 1914, when they were put forth before the end of April; the ash continuing bare that year till the very end of May. Of the many fine walnut trees scattered over the midland and southern English counties, I have seen none equal in size to one figured in Elwes and Henry's great work (vol. ii., plate 74), a truly noble specimen growing at Barrington Park, Oxfordshire. In 1903 it was between 80 and 85 feet high, with a girth of 17 feet. The bole and branches are covered with burrs, indicating that the timber would make beautiful panelling and veneers.