The bark of the horse-chestnut contains a greenish oil, resin, a yellow body, a tannin, C26H24O12, existing likewise in the seeds and various parts of the tree, and decomposable into phloroglucin and aesciglyoxalic acid, C7H5O3, also aesculetin hydrate, and the crystalline fluorescent compound aesculin, of the formula C21H24O13 (Rochleder and Schwarz), with which occurs a similar substance fraxin, the paviin of Sir G.G. Stokes (Q.J. Chem. Soc. xi. 17, 1859; xii. 126, 1860), who suggests that its presence may perhaps account for the discrepancies in the analyses of aesculin given by different authors. From the seeds have been obtained starch (about 14%), gum, mucilage, a non-drying oil, phosphoric acid, salts of calcium, saponin, by boiling which with dilute hydrochloric or sulphuric acid aesculic acid is obtained, quercitrin, present also in the fully developed leaves, aescigenin, C12H26O2, and aesculetin, C9H6O4, which is procurable also, but in small quantity only, from the bark. Friedrich Rochleder has described as constituent principles of the cotyledons aphrodaescin, C52H82O23, a bitter glucoside, argyraescin, C27H42O12, aescinic acid, C24H40O12, and queraescitrin, C41H46O25, found also in the leaves. To prepare pure starch from the seeds, Flandin (Compt. rend. xxvii. 391, 1848; xxviii. 138, 1849) recommends kneading them, when peeled and bruised, in an aqueous solution of 1/100 to 1/60 of their weight of sodium carbonate. E. Staffel (Ann. d. Chem. u. Pharm. lxxvi., 1850, p. 379) after drying found, in spring and autumn respectively, 10.9 and 3.38% of ash in the wood, 8.68 and 6.57 in the bark, and 7.68 and 7.52 in the leaves of the horse-chestnut. The ash of the unripe fruit contains 58.77, that of the ripe kernel 61.74, and that of the green shell 75.91% of potash (E. Wolff).
The wood of the horse-chestnut is soft, and serves only for the making of water-pipes, for turner’s work and common carpentry, as a source of charcoal for gunpowder, and as fuel. Newly cut it weighs 60 ℔, and dry 35 ℔ per cub. ft. approximately. The bark has been employed for dyeing yellow and for tanning, and was formerly in popular repute as a febrifuge and tonic. The powder of the dried nuts was at one time prescribed as a sternutatory (to encourage sneezing) in the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia. It is stated to form with alum-water a size or cement highly offensive to vermin, and with two parts of wheaten flour the material for a strong bookbinder’s paste. Infusion of horse-chestnuts is found to expel worms from soil, and soon to kill them if they are left in it. The nuts furthermore have been applied to the manufacture of an oil for burning, cosmetic preparations and starch, and in Switzerland, France and Ireland, when rasped on ground, to the bleaching of flax, hemp, silk and wool. In Geneva horse-chestnuts are largely consumed by grazing stock, a single sheep receiving 2 ℔ crushed morning and evening. Given to cows in moderate quantity, they have been found to enhance both the yield and flavour of milk. Deer readily eat them, and, after a preliminary steeping in lime-water, pigs also. For poultry they should be used boiled, and mixed with other nourishment. The fallen leaves are relished by sheep and deer, and afford a good litter for flocks and herds.
One variety of the horse-chestnut has variegated leaves, and another double flowers. Darwin observed that Ae. Pavia, the red buckeye of North America, shows a special tendency, under unfavourable conditions, to be double-blossomed. The seeds of this species are used to stupefy fish. The scarlet-flowered horse-chestnut, Ae. rubicunda, is a handsome tree, less in height and having a rounder head than the common form; it is a native of North America. Another species, possessing flowers with the lower petals white with a red tinge, and the upper yellow and red with a white border, and fruit unarmed, is Ae. indica, a native of the western Himalayas. Among the North American species are the foetid or Ohio buckeye, Ae. glabra, and Ae. flava, the sweet buckeye. Ae. californica, when full-grown and in flower, is a beautiful tree, but its leaves often fall before midsummer.
(2) The Spanish or sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa (natural order, Fagaceae), is a stately and magnificent tree, native of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, but also ripening its fruit in sheltered situations as far north as Scotland. It lives very long, and attains a large size, spreading its branches widely. It has large glossy lanceolate leaves with a toothed margin. The flowers, which appear in early summer, are in pendulous, slender yellowish catkins, which bear a number of staminate flowers with a few pistillate flowers at the base. The staminate contain 8 to 20 stamens which produce an enormous amount of dusty yellow pollen, some of which gets carried by wind to the protruding stigmas of the pistillate flowers. The latter are borne three together, invested by a cupule of four green bracts, which, as the fruit matures, grow to form the tough green prickly envelope surrounding the group of generally three nuts. The largest known chestnut tree is the famous Castagno di cento cavalli, or the chestnut of a hundred horses, on the slopes of Mount Etna, a tree which, when measured about 1780 by Count Borch, was found to have a circumference of 190 ft. The timber bears a striking resemblance to that of the oak, which has been mistaken for chestnut; but it may be distinguished by the numerous fine medullary rays. Unlike oak, the wood is more valuable while young than old. When not more than fifty years old it forms durable posts for fences and gates; but at that age it often begins to deteriorate, having ring-shakes and central hollows. In a young state, when the stems are not above 2 in. in diameter at the ground, the chestnut is found to make durable hoops for casks and props for vines; and of a larger size it makes good hop-poles.
Chestnuts (the fruit of the tree) are extensively imported into Great Britain, and are eaten roasted or boiled, and mashed or otherwise as a vegetable. In a raw state they have a sweet taste, but are difficult of digestion. The trees are very abundant in the south of Europe, and chestnuts bulk largely in the food resources of the poor in Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Germany. In Italy the kernels are ground into meal, and used for thickening soups, and even for bread-making. In North America the fruits of an allied species, C. americana, are eaten both raw and cooked.
CHETTLE, HENRY (1564?-1607?), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was the son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer. He was apprenticed in 1577 to a stationer, and in 1591 became a partner with William Hoskins and John Danter. In 1592 he published Robert Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. In the preface to his Kind Herts Dreame (end of 1592) he found it necessary to disavow any share in that pamphlet, and incidentally he apologized to three persons (one of them commonly identified with Shakespeare) who had been abused in it. Piers Plainnes Seaven Yeres Prentiship, the story of a fictitious apprenticeship in Crete and Thrace, appeared in 1595. As early as 1598 Francis Meres includes him in his Palladis Tamia as one of the “best for comedy,” and between that year and 1603 he wrote or collaborated in some forty-nine pieces. He seems to have been generally in debt, judging from numerous entries in Henslowe’s diary of advances for various purposes, on one occasion (17th of January 1599) to pay his expenses in the Marshalsea prison, on another (7th of March 1603) to get his play out of pawn. Of the thirteen plays usually attributed to Chettle’s sole authorship only one was printed. This was The Tragedy of Hoffmann: or a Revenge for a Father (played 1602; printed 1631), a share in which Mr Fleay assigns to Thomas Heywood. It has been suggested that this piece was put forward as a rival to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Among the plays in which Chettle had a share is catalogued The Danish Tragedy, which was probably either identical with Hoffmann or another version of the same story. The Pleasant Comedie of Patient Grissill (1599), in which he collaborated with Thomas Dekker and William Haughton, was reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1841. It contains the lyric “Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers,” which is probably Dekker’s. In November 1599 Chettle receives ten shillings for mending the first part of “Robin Hood,” i.e. The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, by Anthony Munday; and in the second part, which followed soon after and was printed in 1601, The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntingdon, he collaborated with Munday. Both plays are printed in Dodsley’s Select Collection of Old English Plays (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, vol. viii.). In 1603 Chettle published England’s Mourning Garment, in which are included some verses alluding to the chief poets of the time. His death took place before the appearance of Dekker’s Knight’s Conjurer in 1607, for he is there mentioned as a recent arrival in limbo.
Hoffmann was edited by H. B(arrett) L(ennard) (1852) and by Richard Ackermann (Bamberg, 1894).
CHEVALIER, ALBERT (1861- ), English comedian, began a connexion with the stage while still a child. In 1877 he was engaged as an actor under the Bancrofts in London, and for some years played “legitimate” parts at the Court theatre and elsewhere. In 1891, however, he began a successful music-hall career as a singer of coster songs of his own invention, a new type in which he had an immediate success, both in England and America. He subsequently organized an entertainment of his own, with sketches and songs, with which he went on tour, establishing a wide popularity as an original artist in his special line.