AMENTlFERiE. 167 



state as well as in the dry. In France and Germany, where wood is the prevailing 

 fuel, this beech-wood is used largely for the purpose. When carbonised, it forms 

 excellent charcoal, which is capable of being manufactured into gunpowder, though 

 inferior to the lighter kinds. 



The leaves, gathered green and dried, were formerly used in Britain, and still are on 

 the Continent, for filling beds. EveljTi says, " Being gathered about the fall, and 

 somewhat before they are nluch frost-bitten, they afford the best and easiest mattresses 

 in the world to lay under our quilts, instead of straw, because, besides their tenderness 

 and loose-lying togethei', they continue sweet for seven or eight years, long before 

 which time straw becomes musty and hard. They are used by divers persons of 

 quality in Dauphine and in Switzerland. I have sometimes lain on them, to my very 

 great refreshment. So as of this tree it may very properly be said, ' the wood as 

 house, the leaves a bed.' " 



The triangular nut- like fruit of the beech, called beech-mast in England, and la fame 

 in France, has a taste somewhat like that of the hazel-nut. It contains a large 

 quantity of fixed oil, together with starch and sugar, and is very nutritious and fatten- 

 ing to oxen, swine, and poultry. The flesh of pigs which are fed on it does not keep 

 so well as that of those fattened on acorns. The fat also is more oily and more liable 

 to waste. Beech- mast is much sought after by -wild animals, particularly by badgers, 

 by squirrels, and dormice, which last Evelyn says, " Harbouring in the hollow trees, 

 grow so fat that in some countries abroad they take infinite numbers of them, I 

 suppose, to eat." In Britain the only use made of the mast is to turn swine, deer, 

 and poultry into beech- woods to pick it up ; but in France it forms an important 

 article of domestic consumption for making oil. It is considered not only good for 

 bui'ning in lamps, but for cooking pnrposes, especially for frying fish. The seed is 

 gathered when quite ripe by shaking the branches of the tree, and collecting the fruit 

 in a cloth spread below. It is dried under cover, and ground into paste in a mill ; 

 the mass is then subjected to pressure in bags of hair or linen ; one-sixth part of the 

 weight of the dry seed is sometimes obtained ; but the produce varies according to 

 the season. In the reign of Queen Anne, one Aaron Hill, a poet, formed a company 

 for the extraction of oil from beech-nuts, and proposed to pay off" the National Debt 

 with the profits ; but after the expenditure of much money, it shared the fate of so 

 many more modern schemes, and fell to the ground. It is probable that a warmer 

 cHmate than ours is required for the full development and ripening of the beech-mast, 

 so as to make it valuable for oil. The cake left after the extraction of the oil is an 

 excellent cattle food, but seems to disagree with horses, on account of a peculiar 

 principle which exists in the seed, and is called fagine, and possesses narcotic 

 properties. 



The bark of the beech contains a considerable quantity of tannin and gallic acid, 

 but is not so valuable for tanning leather as that of many other trees. The young 

 branches and waste wood are largely consumed in the manufacture of acetic or pyro- 

 ligneous acid ; they likewise yield a considerable quantity of potash. 



The finest beech trees in Britain are said to grow in Hampshire, and there is a 

 curious legend respecting those in the Forest of St. Leonard, in that county. This 

 forest, which was the abode of St. Leonard, abounds in noble beech trees, and the 

 Saint was particularly fond of reposing under their shade, but when he did so he was 

 annoyed during the day by vipers, and at night by the singing of the nightingale. 

 Accordingly, he prayed that they might be removed ; and such was the efiicacy of 

 his prayers that since his time in that forest 



