and hoops for barrels, for which purpose the long straight shoots are split in two. Grown as coppice, the Chestnut also provides fine cover for pheasants and other game. The trees begin to bear when about twenty-five years old, and from thence on to the fiftieth or sixtieth year the timber is at its best, but later it develops the defect known as "ring shake," and becomes of little use. That is probably why one meets with so many hollow wrecks of what were once noble Chestnuts. The young wood is covered with smooth brown bark, but later this becomes grey, and its surface splits into longitudinal fissures, which give a very distinctive character to the trunk. In older trees the fissures and the alternating ridges have a slight spiral twist, which gives the tree the appearance (shown in our third photo) of having been wrenched round by some mighty force. The average age of the Chestnut is about five hundred years, but there have been in this country many old trees that were much older, if any reliance could be placed in local tradition. There was--we fear there is little of it still remaining--the great Tortworth Chestnut in Lord Ducies' park at Tortworth Court. In 1820 it was found to have a girth of fifty-two feet. Evelyn refers to it in his "Sylva," and tells us that in the reign of King Stephen it already bore the title of the Great Chestnut of Tortworth. The name Chestnut appears to be a modification of the old Latin name _Castanea_, through the French form _Chataigner_. The Latin is said to be derived from Kastanum, a town in Thessaly, but it is more likely that the presence of Chestnut-trees gave a name to the town, as has happened so many times in our own country with various trees, the Chestnut included. Horse Chestnut (_Aesculus hippocastanum_).