any

Douster Swivel, in the Antiquary, use a hazel twig as a divining-rod; and several instances are mentioned, in different volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine, of divining-rods having been in use in England as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. The following passage, quoted in the Mirror (vol. xxi. p. 58.), and said to have been found written in an old edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, published in 1640, will show the manner in which the diviningrod was used about that period: - "The finding of gold which is under the earth, as of all other mines of metal, is almost miraculous. They cut up a ground hazel of a twelvemonth's growth, which divides above into a fork, holding the one branch in the right hand, and the other in the left, not held too slightly, or too strictly. When passing over a mine, or any other place where gold or silver is hidden, it will discover the same by bowing down violently; a common experiment in Germany, not proceeding from incantation, but a natural sympathy, as iron is attracted by the loadstone." The rods of Saracens and magicians, according to the Dictionnaire des Eaux et Forêts, were also of hazel. Numerous other virtues were anciently attributed to hazel rods. The ashes of the shells of its nuts, applied to the back of a child's head, were supposed to turn the child's eyes from grey to black; and Parkinson "Some doe hold that these nuts, and not wallnuts, with figs and rue, was Mithridates' medicine, effectuall against poysons. The oyle of the nuts is effectuall for the same purposes." He also says that, "if a snake be stroke with an hasell wand, it doth sooner stunne it, than with any other strike; because it is so pliant, that it will winde closer about it; so that, being deprived of their motion, they must needs dye with paine and want; and it is no hard matter, in like manner, saith Tragus, to kill a mad dog that shall be strook with an hazel sticke, such as men use to walke or ride withall." (Theat. of Plants, p. 1416.) Evelyn says that the "venerable and sacred fabric of Glastonbury, founded by Joseph of Arimathea, is storied to have been first composed of a few hazel rods interwoven about a few stakes driven into the ground." The nut has been cultivated for its fruit since the time of the Romans; who, according to Sir William Temple, called Scotland Caledonia, from Cal-Dun, the hill of hazel. On the Continent, the hazel is grown in large quantities in Spain, and in some parts of Italy; and the fruit from the former country is celebrated throughout Europe. In Great Britain, it is most extensively cultivated in Kent; and, the produce being easily sent every where, and not suffering either by carriage or keeping, the tree is not much grown for its fruit in private gardens.

says,

Poetical and legendary Allusions. Virgil alludes to the hazel in his Georgics, as we have before mentioned (p. 2020.); and again in his Eclogues, giving it the epithets of hard and dense. The hazel, however, was not nearly so great a favourite with the Latin poets as with those of the middle ages. The troubadours, and old French romance writers, have scarcely a song that does not allude to the hazel bush or hazel nut. Our own poets have also been lavish on the same theme. Cowley mentions that the hazel is the favourite resort of the squirrel:

"Upon whose nutty top

A squirrel sits, and wants no other shade
Than what by his own spreading tail is made.
He culls the soundest, dext'rously picks out
The kernels sweet, and throws the shells about."

Thomson, in his Spring, describes birds as building

and, in his Autumn, the lover searching for "the clustering nuts" for his fair one; and, when he finds them,

"Amid the secret shade ;'

And where they burnish on the topmost bough,
With active vigour crushes down the tree;
Or shakes them ripe from the resigning husk,
A glossy shower, and of an ardent brown."

Seasons.

Gray, in his Shepherd's Week, alludes to the magic powers supposed to be possessed by the hazel nuts:

"Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame,

And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name.
This, with the loudest bounce me sore amazed,
That with a flame of brightest colour blazed.
As blazed the nut, so may thy passion grow:
For 't was thy nut that did so brightly glow."

From the custom of burning nuts in this manner on All-Hallows Eve, that day (the 31st of October) has received, in some parts of the country, the vulgar appellation of Nutcrack Night. Burns alludes to this custom in his Halloween:

"Amang the bonny winding banks

Where Doon rins wimpling, clear,

Where Bruce ance ruled the martial ranks,
An' shook the Carrick spear,

Some merry, friendly, countra folks

Together did convene,

To burn their nuts, an' pou their stocks,

And haud their Halloween

Fu' blythe that night.”

The following pretty lines on this subject were published in a Collection of Poems, printed at Dublin in 1801:

"These glowing nuts are emblems true

Of what in human life we view :

The ill-matched couple fret and fume,

And thus in strife themselves consume;

Or, from each other wildly start,

And with a noise for ever part.

But see the happy, happy pair,

Of genuine love and truth sincere;

With mutual fondness, while they burn,

Still to each other kindly turn;

And, as the vital sparks decay,

Together gently sink away;

Till, life's fierce ordeal being past,

Their mingled ashes rest at last."

Many other quotations might be given, but we shall content ourselves with

only one more, from Wordsworth:

"Among the woods

And o'er the pathless rocks I forced my way;
Until at length I came to one dear nook,
Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Droop'd with its wither'd leaves, ungracious sign

Of devastation! But the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung,

A virgin scene! A little while I stood,

Breathing with such suppression of the heart

As joy delights in; and with wise restraint,

Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed

The banquet. Then up I arose,

And dragg'd to earth each branch and bough with crash,

And merciless ravage; and the shady nook

Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,

Deform'd and sullied, patiently gave up

Their quiet being: but, unless I now

Confound my present feelings with the past,

Even then, when from the bower I turn'd away

Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld

The silent trees, and the intruding sky."

Properties and Uses. The hazel, in a wild state, affords, by its numerous branches, protection to various small birds: its nuts afford food to the squir rels, and some other quadrupeds; to some of the larger birds; and to man in a wandering and half-civilised state; but there are a few insects that live on its leaves. Considered as a timber tree, the wood is never of a sufficient size for building purposes; but it is used in cabinet-making, and for various smaller and more delicate productions. It weighs, dry, 49 lb., per cubic foot. It is tender, pliant, of a whitish red colour, and of a close, even, and full grain; but it does not take a very bright polish. The roots, when they are of sufficient size, afford curiously veined pieces, which are used in veneering

cabinets, tea-chests, &c. The great use of the hazel, however, is for undergrowth. Being extremely tough and flexible, the root shoots are used for making crates, hurdles, hoops, wattles, walkingsticks, fishing-rods, whip handles, ties for faggots, springes to catch birds, and for fastening down the thatch, and for withs and bands for general purposes. A strong fence is made by driving stakes into the ground, and wattling the space between them with hazel rods. Evelyn tells us that out-houses, and even cottages, were sometimes made in this manner. In the county of Durham, particularly in the Vale of Derwent, hazel coppices are grown extensively for what are called corf rods, and hoops for coopers. The corf rods are from in. to 3 in. in diameter, and are used for making the baskets called corves, employed for drawing coals out of the pits. (Bailey's Survey of Durham, p. 187.) It is much grown, in Staffordshire, for crates for the potters; but, generally speaking, (though, if left a sufficient time, it will afford poles 20 ft. in length), it is found so inferior to other undergrowths, that Farey, in his excellent Derbyshire Report, advises the grubbing of it up, and replacing it with ash and oak. He also objects to it for hedgerows, on account of the temptation it offers to boys to break the hedges, in order to get at the nuts; and because the leaves and young shoots are said to be injurious to cattle if eaten by them, and to produce the disease called the red water. (Gen. View, &c., vol. ii. p. 91.) Hazel rods, cut as nearly as possible of the same size, and varnished, form an admirable material for constructing rustic garden seats, like that shown in fig. 1944.,

and flower-baskets (fig. 1945.). An agreeable variety may be produced by using the rods alternately peeled, and with their bark on; or by mixing them with rods of some other kind of wood. Unpeeled hazel rods are, however, both handsomer and more durable than similar rods of any other kind of tree; and a variety may be produced in them by choosing them with bark of different shades; or even staining them with a decoction of logwood, or other dye, and then arranging them in a pattern, as shown in the arbour fig. 1946. Mr. Matthews, a carpenter residing at Frimley in Berkshire, has carried this idea still further, and, by an ingenious arrangement of different-coloured hazel rods, he produces a complete landscape, which, seen at a little distance, has a very striking effect. (See Gard. Mag., vol. ix. p. 678.) Faggots of hazel are in great demand for heating ovens; and the charcoal, which is very light, is

considered excellent for gunpowder; it is also used for making crayons for drawing, being, for that purpose, charred in closed iron tubes. The principal use of the hazel in England, at the present time, is as a fruit tree; and a great quantity of the nuts, both of the wild and cultivated kinds, are sold in the English markets. "Besides those raised at home," says McCulloch, "we import nuts from different parts of France, Portugal, and Spain, but principally from the latter. The Spanish nuts in the highest estimation, though sold under the name of Barcelona nuts, are not really shipped at that city, but at Tarragona, a little more to the south. Mr. Inglis says that the annual average export of nuts from Tarragona is from 25,000 to 30,000 bags, of four bags to the ton. The cost was, free on board, in autumn, 1830, 17s. 6d. a bag. (Spain in 1830, vol. ii. p. 362.) The entries of nuts for home consumption amount to from 100,000 to 125,000 bushels a year; the duty of 28. a bushel producing from 10,000/. to 12,550/. clear." (Dict. of Com., p. 853.) Mr. M'Culloch adds, "The kernels have a mild, farinaceous, oily taste, agreeable to most palates. A kind of chocolate has been prepared

from them; and they have been sometimes made into bread. The expressed oil of hazel nuts is little inferior to that of almonds." Evelyn tells us that hazel nuts, though considered unwholesome to those who were asthmatic, were, in his "time, thought to be fattening; and, when full ripe, the filberts especially, if peeled in warm water, as they blanch almonds, make a pudding very little, if at all, inferior to what our ladies make of almonds." (vol. i. p. 217.) The oil made from hazel nuts, which is usually called nut oil, is best made in the middle of winter; as, if made sooner, the nut yields less oil; and, if later, it is apt to become rancid. It is extracted in the same manner as the walnut oil. (See p. 1429.). It is never made in England, and but rarely in France.

As an ornamental tree, the hazel, when trained to a single stem, forms a very handsome object for a lawn, near a winter's residence; because it not only retains its leaves a long time in autumn, after they have assumed a rich yellow colour, but, as soon as they drop, they discover the nearly full-grown male catkins, which often come into full flower at the end of October, and remain on the tree in that state throughout the winter; and, in days of bright sunshine in February and March, when slightly moved by the wind, they have a gay and most enlivening appearance. The length of time the leaves remain on the tree, and their rich yellow, render the hazel, as we have already observed (p. 2019.), one of the most ornamental of all deciduous shrubs as undergrowth; it ranking, in this respect, with the oak and the beech. The foliage of the birch and the willow, two of the commonest undergrowths in indigenous woods, is meagre, and drops off suddenly; while the leaves of the ash and the chestnut drop off early, when they have scarcely changed colour; and, hence, these trees, as undergrowths, are far inferior to the hazel in woods which form conspicuous features in the view from a mansion, or where orna

ment is at all taken into consideration. The purple-leaved hazel is a very handsome tree, and, with the common, may be very fitly associated in a group with the cut-leaved hazel; and, as an evergreen to contrast with them, may be added Gárrya elliptica, the male catkins of which are often nearly 1 ft. in length, and appear at the same time, and continue as long, as those of the hazel. In many parts of France, bosquets, or small groves, and also arbours and covered walks, of the hazel are often found near old châteaux ; and the same practice appears to have been followed in this country, if we may judge from the remains of covered nut walks yet existing in some old gardens. In shrubberies, the hazel gives rise to many interesting associations in the minds of those who have been brought up in nut countries. The writer of the article on Córylus, in the Nouveau Du Hamel, is eloquent in praise of the hazel on this account; and Sir Thomas Dick Lauder says: "The hazel, besides making up a prominent part of many a grove in the happiest manner, and tufting and fringing the sides of many a ravine, often presents us with very picturesque stems and ramifications. Then, when we think of the lovely scenes into which the careless steps of our youth have been led in search of its nuts, when autumn had begun to brown the points of their clusters, we are bound to it by threads of the most delightful associations, with those beloved ones, who were the companions of such idle, but happy days." (For. Scen., i. p. 197.)

Soil and Situation. The hazel, according to Cobbett, "grows best upon what is called a hazel mould; that is to say, mould of a reddish brown: but it will grow almost any where, from a chalk or gravel, to a cold and wet clay; but the rods are durable in proportion to the dryness of the ground on which the hazel grows, and they are particularly good where the bottom is chalk." (Woodlands, § 283.) The situation most favourable is on the sides of hills, for it will not thrive in a soil where water is stagnant; though, like all trees and shrubs that grow in dense masses, it requires a great deal of moisture; and, indeed, it will always keep the ground moist under it by the denseness of its shade.

Propagation and Culture. The species is propagated by nuts, which, from the common wild filbert, are, in plentiful years, from 20s. to 30s. a sack of three bushels. These may be dried in the sun, and preserved in a dry loft, covered with straw, or in sand, till the following February; when they may be sown, and treated in the same manner as mast or chestnuts. After remaining in the seed-bed two years, they may be transplanted into nursery lines; and in one or two years more they will be fit for removal to their final situation. Where a hazel copse is to be formed, the nuts may be sown in drills, on ploughed ground, early in spring, and a crop of oats taken the first year; but this method cannot be recommended, as the nut, when young, is, as Cobbett observes, as tender as a radish, and easily injured by weeds. Plantations, therefore, are best made by planting; and the plants may be set in rows at 5 ft.