THE ANCESTRY OF THE BEECH 69 



sin and southward to western Florida and Texas. It frequents 

 rich uplands and mountain slopes in the northern part of its 

 range and bottom lands in the South, reaching its maximum 

 development in the lower valley of the Ohio and on the slopes 

 of the southern AUeghanies. The fourth existing species is the 

 European beech and its horticultural varieties. It is one of the 

 common forest trees of temperate Europe from southern Norway 

 and Sweden to the Alediterranean, ascending to elevations of 

 five thousand feet in the Swiss Alps. It is common in southern 

 Russia and throughout Asia Minor to northern Persia. 



The common name of beech is from the Anglo-Saxon hoc, 

 bece or beoce, the German huche, the Swedish box — all words 

 signifying book as well as beech and derived from the Sanscrit 

 boko or letter and bokos or writings. This connection of the ver- 

 nacular name of the tree with the graphic arts is supposed to 

 have originated from the fact that the old Runic tablets were of 

 beech wood. 



The beech has been utilized by the natives of Europe since 

 prehistoric times, a fact shown by the presence of its remains 

 in the deposits of the Swiss lake dwellings of the Neolithic 

 period or younger Stone age. It is one of the largest of British 

 trees, especially on chalky or sandy soils. Beech mast, formerly 

 known as ''buck," was not only a subject of medieval local legis- 

 lation, but it even gives its name to the county of Buckingham. 



It is obvious from the interrupted distribution of these four 

 existing species, namely one in Europe, one in southeastern 

 North America and two in eastern Asia, strikingly shown on the 

 accompanying sketch map, that these existing species are the 

 isolated remnants of a distribution which in late geologic time 

 must have covered the intervening areas and embraced practi- 

 cally the whole northern hemisphere. This supposition derived 

 from a study of the present ranges of the four existing species 

 will subsequently be shown to be somewhat less rather than the 

 whole story which geologic history elucidates. 



With the exploration of antipodean lands during the last cen- 

 tury about a dozen forms of beech-like trees and shrubs v/ere 

 discovered in New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Chile and 



THE PLANT WORLD, VOL. 19, XO. 3, 191G 



