THE BEECH. 85 



chesnut, and elm, the beech still lifts its magnificence distinct and 

 unrivalled, and even the crown of its concluding moments has a rich- 

 ness superior to that of any other. Leaves, it may be well to say, 

 assume these beautiful tints in autumn, through failure of their power 

 to appropriate only the carbon of the atmosphere during the perform- 

 ance of the process of respiration. They become, in consequence, 

 super-oxygenised, and the oxygen, as in other cases, manifests its 

 presence by giving an unaccustomed brightness of tint. We are apt to 

 speak of the fading of the leaves in autumn ; it would be more truthful 

 to speak of it as the autumnal painting. Very prone are we also to 

 connect the idea of "autumnal foliage" with trees only, overlooking 

 the fact that multitudes of herbaceous plants, including many of the 

 most inconsiderable weeds of the wayside, are gifted with an equal 

 beauty in the decline of life. No tint in nature is lovelier than the 

 roseate amber of the October foliage of the little silver-weed, Potentilla 

 Anserina ; while docks and sorrels glow with vivid crimson, and the 

 hedge -parsley turns its fern-like leaves to the colour of a king's mantle. 

 Nature delights here, as everywhere else, to echo her greatest things in 

 her least ones. No blind heart was that which in old time said that 

 Pan, the god of material nature, took for his wife the nymph Echo, 

 he playing on his sevenfold pipe, wrought from the reeds by the river, 

 while she gave response to every harmony. 



Lastly should we note the singular fruit of the beech. In May, 

 soon after the young leaves are open, the tree is ornamented with ten 

 thousand globular clusters, downy, and containing all the essentials of 

 a flower ; by tha time that the lilac stars of the michaelmas-daisy begin 

 to shine in the garden, these are followed by prickly pods the size of 

 an acorn, and very curiously corresponding with acorns in structure. 

 That part which in the fruit of the oak is a smooth-edged and hemi- 

 spherical cup, in the beech is four-valved, the valves recurving like 

 those of a chesnut ; the acorn itself is represented by a triangular brown 

 nut, with margins almost as sharp as the blade of a knife. In Spring 

 these three-cornered seeds are prone to sprout, and among the mosses 

 on the hedge-bank, beeches, like children at play, are found beginning 

 the world anew. 



Beeches are not like oaks, the resort of many living creatures ; the 

 number of insects frequenting them is comparatively few, nor are 

 they much sought after by the nest-builders. A pleasing association 

 clings to the tree nevertheless, such as we have with scarcely another, 

 for as long as children's voices are lovely to human souls, will be their 



