1956 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART Ill. 
tricts of England, especially on chalky hills. Some, as we have seen (p. 21.), 
are disposed to consider the tree as not aboriginal; but with this supposition 
we cannot agree. It abounds on the great ridge of chalk hills which passes 
from Dorsetshire through Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent ; 
branching out into Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire ; and it is 
also found on~the Stroudwater and Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, and 
on the bleak banks of the Wye in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire. It 
is particularly abundant in Buckinghamshire, where it forms extensive forests, 
of great magnificence and beauty. It is seldom found mixed with other trees ; 
its own dense head suffocating most other species, even when they are coeval 
with it in point of age. Nothing, says South, will grow under the beech but 
the holly and the truffle. It is rarely found in soil that is not more or less 
calcareous; and it most commonly abounds on chalk. In some parts of 
Hertfordshire, where the soil is a calcareous clay full of flints, the beech 
attains a large size. The tree is not indigenous to Scotland or Ireland. 
History. The beech was known to both the Greeks and Romans; though 
some doubts have arisen as to the names by which it was designated by these 
nations. By Theophrastus it was called Oxua, and by Dioscorides Phégos. 
Theophrastus also describes a tree under the name of Phégos; but he places 
it among the oaks; and it is now generally supposed to be the Quércus E’s- 
culus ZL. Doubts have also arisen as to whether our beech was the Fagus of 
the Romans, from the assertion of Caesar, in his Commentaries, that he found 
no Fagiin Britain (see p. 21.) ; but that the Fagus of Pliny and Virgil wasthe 
same as that of Linnzus, is thus proved by Fée, in his Flore de Virgil. “ Pliny 
(lib. xvi. cap. 6.) says, ‘ Fagi glans, nuclei similis, triangula cute includitur.’ 
(The mast of the beech is like a nut, included in a triangular case.) The 
epithets applied to this tree by Virgil are all applicable to our beech. It is 
spreading: —‘ Tityre, tu patule recubans sub tegmine fagi.” (cl. i. 1.) 
It has dense tufted foliage; and, consequently, its branches afford a shade im- 
pervious to the rays of the sun: —‘ Tantum inter densas, umbrosa cacumina, 
fagos’ (cl. ii. 3.); and, as it lives nearly as long as the oak, it is well 
entitled to the epithet of old: Aut hic ad veteres fagos. (cl. iii. 12.) It is 
also one of the loftiest trees of the European forests: —‘ Ceditur et tilia 
ante jugo levis, altaque fagus.’ (Geor, i. 173.) It thus appears that the 
Fagus of Virgil agrees in every respect with the beech tree of the moderns.” 
(Fi. de Virg., p. 54.) The ancients seem to have set considerable value on the 
beech mast as an article of food. Pliny speaks of the mast (glandem) of the 
beech as being the sweetest of all (dulcissima omnium) ; and states that, at 
the siege of Chios, the besieged lived for some time entirely on beech mast. 
Vessels made of beech wood were used in the Roman sacrifices; and the nut 
was in repute as a medicine. Pliny and Virgil both tell us that the beech 
was grafted on the chestnut; a circumstance which has called forth much 
discussion among commentators. Servius thinks it absurd that a barren 
beech, as he calls it, should be engrafted on a fruitful chestnut ; and fancies 
that there is an error in the text. Grimoaldus thinks that the poet means a 
wild sort of chestnut, which might be used as a stock on which to graft the 
beech; and Dr. Trapp highly approves of this reading. These, and other 
commentators, Martyn observes, proceed on the supposition that chestnuts 
were esteemed, in Virgil’s time, as much superior to beech mast as they are 
now; the contrary to which, he says, might easily be proved. Pliny men- 
tions chestnuts as a very inferior kind of fruit, and seems to express surprise 
that nature should take such care of the nuts, which he calls “ vilissima,” 
as to defend them with a prickly husk ; while the mast of the beech was reck- 
oned a very sweet nut, and was in use both as food and medicine. Pliny 
frequently mentions the beech in his Natural History. In one place, he says 
that “ there was a little hill called Corne, in the territory of Tusculum, not 
far from the city of Rome, that was clad and beautified with a grove and tufts 
of beech trees, which were as even and round in the head as if they had been 
curiously trimmed with garden shears.” He adds: —“ This grove was, in old 
