AMENTIFERiE. 165 



very long Blender brown scales. Leaves on petioles commonly about 

 4i inch long; the lamina 2 to 3 inches, shortly acuminate, somewhat 

 plicate, with 6 to 8 veins running straight from the midrib to the margins. 

 Stipules scarious, resembling the bud scales, very caducous. Flowers 

 appearing with the young leaves, on the shoots produced from buds 

 of the preceding year. Male catkins on stalks 1 to 2 inches long, 

 pendulous, ovoid, with very long weak stamens and pale yellow anthers. 

 Female flowers above the male, on stout peduncles, generally shorter 

 than those of the male catkins. Involucre in fruit 4-cleft, hairy with 

 numerous subulate bristles or processes. Nuts orange-brown, ^ inch 

 long, triquetrous, smooth and' shining, with a small triangular basal 

 scar. Leaves deep green, shining above, paler beneath. The cotyle- 

 dons are remarkable in germination for their great breadth, which 

 makes them pseudo-connate. 



Common Beech. 



French, Hetre faijnrd. German, Both BucJie. 



This is one of the most tisefiil, and perhaps the most beautiful, of our woodland 

 trees. Its appearance is familiar to most people, and it is one of the few trees whoso 

 features are so marked that our artists find no difficulty in transferring it to canvas, 

 and making it recognisable. Gilpin, however, does not consider the beech tree as the 

 most picturesque of our forest trees. He finds fault with its skeleton, with its knotted 

 and irregular trunk, and says, " The branches are fantastically wreathed and dispro- 

 portioned, turning awkwardly among each other, and running often into long unvaried 

 lines, without any of the strength and firmness that we admire in the oak, or of that 

 easy simplicity which pleases us in the ash ; in short, we rarely see a beech well 

 ramified. In full leaf it is equally unpleasing ; it has the appearance of an overgrown 

 bush. Virgil, indeed, was right in choosing the beech for its shade. 'No tree forms 

 so complete a roof This bushiness gives great heaviness to the tree, which is always 

 a deformity. What lightness it has disgusts. You will see a light branch issuing 

 from a heavy mass, and though such pendent branches are often beautiful in them- 

 selves, they are seldom in harmony with the tree. On the whole, the massy full- 

 grown luxuriant beech is rather a displeasing tree." 



We cannot agree with these severe remarks, and we are glad to find that a different 

 view is taken of the merits of the beech tree by other writers. Sir T. D. Lauder 

 observes on Gilpin's observations, that they afford " one of the instances in which the 

 author's love for the art of representing the objects of nature with the pencil, and his 

 associations with the pleasures of that art, have very much led him astray." He 

 adds, " Some of the very circumstances which render it unpictm^esque, or, in other 

 words, which render it an unmanageable subject of art, highly contribute to render 

 it beautiful. The glazed surface of the leaf, which brightly reflects the sun's rays, 

 and the gentle emotions of light, if we may venture so to express ourselves, which 

 steal over the surface of its foliage, with the breathing of the balmy breeze, although 

 difficult, or rather impossible, to be represented by the artist, are accidents which are 

 productive of very pleasing ideas in the mind of the feeling observer of nature." 

 " They make spreading ti'ces and noble shades," says old Evelyn. Mr. Loudon quotes 

 Sir T. D. Lauder, who says, " We remember to have been much gratified with the 

 efiect of this tree when all other trees were absent ; it was in Italy, on the very 

 summit of the Valombrosan Appenines. During our progress through the scorching 



