THE BEECH. 153 



The common Beech is always raised from seed, and the 

 varieties are propagated by grafting or budding. The 

 mast soon loses its germinating power, and is therefore 

 never sown later than the spring of the year which follows 

 its ripening. The seed leaves, which appear above the 

 ground in April or May, are singularly pale, and at the 

 first glance might be mistaken for a fungus. In ten years 

 the tree reaches a height of about twenty feet. In sixty 

 or eighty years it has usually attained its perfection as 

 timber, but lives for a much longer period. It is not well 

 adapted for coppice-wood, ceasing to send up shoots after 

 about thirty or forty years ; though if cut down before 

 this time, the trees push up again, and the leaves on the 

 shoots so produced seldom fail to remain on the branches 

 during the winter. Young trees generally are, as it has 

 been observed above, liable to the same peculiarity, but 

 not all in the same degree. On this account, fences of 

 young Beech-trees may be employed with advantage in 

 flower-gardens, as with their persistent foliage they 

 screen the tender plants during the winter. Gilbert 

 White remarks, that Beeches love to grow in crowded 

 situations, and will insinuate themselves through the 

 thickest covert, so as to surmount it all ; they are 

 therefore properly applied to mend thin places in tall 

 hedges : care should be taken, however, not to plant them 

 in situations where the drip might be injurious to the 

 vegetation beneath. Where squirrels are abundant, it is 

 sometimes found necessary to protect the trunks of young 

 Beeches by the application of tar and grease, these de- 

 structive little animals being given, especially in spring, 

 to tearing off the bark in strips, in search of the tender 

 inner bark. 



writing on. Folio is from the Latin folium, a leaf. Liber, the 

 Latin for a book, meant originally the inner bark of such trees as 

 the Lime, the Ash, the Maple, the Elm, at one period a common 

 writing material : hence we call a collection of books, a library. 

 This substance being rolled for the convenience of carnage, a col- 

 lection of writings was called a volume, a name afterwards given to 

 like rolls of paper and parchment. 

 H 3 



