_Hamlet_, act ii, sc. 2 (260).

(12) _Dromio of Syracuse._

Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail,
A Rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,
A Nut, a Cherry-stone.

_Comedy of Errors_, act iv, sc. 3 (72).

Dr. Prior has decided that "'Filbert' is a barbarous compound of
_phillon_ or _feuille_, a leaf, and _beard_, to denote its
distinguishing peculiarity, the leafy involucre projecting beyond the
nut." But in the times before Shakespeare the name was more poetically
said to be derived from the nymph Phyllis. Nux Phyllidos is its name in
the old vocabularies, and Gower ("Confessio Amantis") tells us why--

"Phyllis in the same throwe
Was shape into a Nutte-tree,
That alle men it might see;
And after Phyllis philliberde,
This tre was cleped in the yerde"

(Lib. quart.),

and so Spenser spoke of it as "'Phillis' philbert" (Elegy 17).[115:1]

The Nut, the Filbert, and the Cobnut, are all botanically the same, and
the two last were cultivated in England long before Shakespeare's time,
not only for the fruit, but also, and more especially, for the oil.

There is a peculiarity in the growth of the Nut that is worth the notice
of the botanical student. The male blossoms, or catkins (anciently
called "agglettes or blowinges"), are mostly produced at the ends of the
year's shoots, while the pretty little crimson female blossoms are
produced close to the branch; they are completely sessile or unstalked.
Now in most fruit trees, when a flower is fertilized, the fruit is
produced exactly in the same place, with respect to the main tree, that
the flower occupied; a Peach or Apricot, for instance, rests upon the
branch which bore the flower. But in the Nut a different arrangement
prevails. As soon as the flower is fertilized it starts away from the
parent branch; a fresh branch is produced, bearing leaves and the Nut or
Nuts at the end, so that the Nut is produced several inches away from
the spot on which the flower originally was. I know of no other tree
that produces its fruit in this way, nor do I know what special benefit
to the plant arises from this arrangement.

Much folk-lore has gathered round the Hazel tree and the Nuts. The
cracking of Nuts, with much fortune-telling connected therewith, was
the favourite amusement on All Hallow's Eve (Oct. 31), so that