Walnuts are still very popular, but not as poison antidotes; their popularity now rests on their use as pickles, their excellence as autumn and winter dessert fruits, and with pseudo-gipsies for the rich olive hue that the juice will give to the skin. These uses, together with the beauty in the landscape that is given by an old Walnut tree, will always secure for it a place among English trees; yet there can be little doubt that the Walnut is a bad neighbour to other crops, and for that reason its numbers in England have been much diminished. Phillips said there was a decided antipathy between Apples and Walnuts, and spoke of the Apple tree as—
"Uneasy, seated by funereal Yew
Or Walnut (whose malignant touch impairs
All generous fruits), or near the bitter dews
Of Cherries."
And in this he was probably right, though the mischief caused to the Apple tree more probably arises from the dense shade thrown by the Walnut tree than by any malarious exhalation emitted from it.
FOOTNOTES:
[315:1] See Earle's "Philology of the English Tongue," p. 23.