THE BEECH 121 



The common name of beech is from the Anglo-Saxon hoc, bece 

 or beoce, the German buche, the Swedish box— all words signifying 

 book as well as beech and derived from the Sanscrit boko or letter 

 and bokos or writings. This connection of the vernacular name of 

 the tree with the graphic arts is supposed to have originated from 

 the fact that the old Runic tablets were of beechwood. At any 

 rate in beech we probably have the oldest existing name of any 

 wood in the world. 



The beech has been utilized by the natives of Europe since pre- 

 historic times, a fact shown by the presence of its remains in the 

 deposits of the Swiss Lake dwellings of the Neolithic period, or 

 younger stone age (about 7000 B.C.). It is one of the largest of 

 British trees, especially on chalky or sandy soils. Beech mast, 

 formerly known as "buck," was not only a subject of medieval 

 local legislation, but it even gives its name to the county of Buck- 

 ingham. 



It is obvious from the interrupted distribution of these 4 

 existing species, namely, 1 in Europe, 1 in southeastern North 

 America and 2 in eastern Asia, strikingly shown on the accom- 

 panying sketch map, that these existing species are the isolated 

 remnants of a distribution which in late geologic time must have 

 covered the intervening areas and embraced practically the whole 

 Northern Hemisphere. This supposition derived from a study of 

 the present ranges of the 4 existing species will subsequently 

 be shown to be somewhat less rather than the whole story which 

 geologic history elucidates. 



With the exploration of antipodean lands during the last century 

 about a dozen forms of beech-like trees and shrubs were discovered 

 in New Zealand, Austraha, Tasmania, Chile and Terra del Fuego. 

 Some of these were found to only attain the stature of shrubs, 

 many of them were evergreen and all had tiny leaves. They 

 differ from the northern beeches in their partial lack of deciduous 

 habits, their smaller leaves and in their flowers being solitary or 

 grouped in clusters of three. For a long time these southern forms 

 were referred to the genus Fagus, which was divided into two 

 sections — a section Eufagus for the well known species of the north 



