60 
The poet’s favourite beech tree, under which it is said he delighted 
to sit and invoke the Muses, or dream away the day, was pointed out 
to us on the outskirts of the wood, just as we crossed a brook near 
the hamlet of Burnham Common. Wheeling to the left, and driving 
right into the heart of the Burnham Beeches, the carriages were 
drawn up and the horses unyoked for a rest. In true foresters’ 
style, the party grouped themselves under the sylvan shade of the 
venerable beeches, and were hospitably entertained to luncheon by 
Mr Harry J. Veitch. Colonel Bailey, in proposing a most hearty 
vote of thanks to Mr Veitch for his kindness to the party, took 
the opportunity to express the satisfaction of the company that the 
County Council of London had acquired in perpetuity so charming 
a spot for the recreation of the citizens of the Metropolis. 
The company then, under the direction of Mr John Forbes, the 
custodian of the place, drove along many of the most charming of 
the grassy rides which intersect the grounds, and saw on the way 
the most of the curious old pollarded beeches, which are supposed 
to be from five hundred to seven hundred years of age. A line 
or two from Mr A. C. Forbes’s little book on the Beeches will 
better explain their characteristic features than any amount of 
description by a stranger :— 
‘* The beech trees, which render the place so justly famous, are distributed 
pretty evenly over the whole of the forest. They owe their present unique 
and picturesque appearance to their having been subjected at some distant 
period to the operation of pollarding, or lopping off the tops at about 10 feet 
from the ground, which was done for the sake of the timber so obtained. 
They do not appear to have been repeatedly subjected to this treatment, as 
none of them exhibit the scrubby form of growth which is the result of con- 
tinuous lopping, and, judging by their boles, they appear to have been large 
trees when they were topped. It is notable that all the trees, with one 
exception, were pollarded, and that at about the same time, but when and 
by whom it was done, and for what special purpose, is not known. All the 
trees are hollow, but owing to the extraordinary vitality of the bark, or wood- 
forming parts, their shells support, as it were, three or four more trees upon 
them, for the upper limbs are in many cases very large. Many suggestions 
have been made to account for this wholesale lopping, but it is a matter of 
pure conjecture. It is evident that several centuries have elapsed since they 
were topped, but any estimate of their real age is a matter of so much 
uncertainty that we shall not offer one. Gray, writing to Horace Walpole 
in 1737, describes them as being just as venerable as they appear to us now. 
This lopping has hastened their decay, and caused the trunks to be hollow 
and grotesque.” 
The grotesque forms which the gnarled trunks of the great 
beeches have assumed is undoubtedly one of their most remarkable 
