The Natural History of Selborne

Planted ten rows of potatoes against the Wid: Dewye’s garden.  Planted one in the best garden. John Carpenter buys now & then of Mr Powlett of Rotherfield a chest-nut tree or two of the edible kind: they are large, & tall, & contain 60 or 70 feet of timber each.  The wood & bark of these trees resemble the oak; but the wood is softer & the grain more open.  The use that the buyer turns them to is cooperage; because he says the wood is light for buckets, jets &c. & will not shrink.  The grand objection to these trees is their disposition to be shaky; & what is much worse, cup-shaky: viz: the substance of these trees parts like the scales of an onion, & comes out in round plugs from the heart.  This, I know, was also the case with those fine chest-nut-trees that were lately cut at Bramshot-place against Portsmouth road.  Now as the soil at Rotherfield is chalk, & at Bramshot, sand; it seems as if this disposition to be shaky was not owing to soil alone, but the nature of that tree.  There are two groves of chest-nuts in Rotherfield-park, which are tall, & old, & have rather over-stood their prime.  J: Carpenter gives only 8d a foot for this timber, on account of the defect above-mentioned.