APPENDIX. 



with the fact of its rarely seeding here, should incline us to the 

 latter view. It is obvious, as has often been suggested, that the 

 Romans who introduced the vine may have introduced with it 

 the 'piller' elm, the two plants being so commonly wedded in 

 Italian husbandry, as in both Italian and English poetry. On the 

 other hand, the readiness with which the wych-elm ripens its seeds, 

 and its power of maintaining itself and flourishing even in the 

 highlands of Scotland, to say nothing of its trivial name, the nation- 

 ality of which is disputed, would appear to show that it at least is 

 an indigenous tree ; and it may consequently have contributed in 

 larger proportions and given pro tanto a larger share of beauty to 

 the prehistoric landscape than it does now to ours. 



Dwellers on or near the chalk districts of England are too familiar 

 with the conspicuous and beautiful, though common, seedlings of the 

 beech not to feel considerable doubt as to the accuracy of Julius 

 Caesar's statement that the tree though present in Gaul was wanting 

 in Britain. Antiquaries who are familiar with the fact of the great 

 abundance of the bones of the domestic pig in British barrows, both 

 of the stone and of the bronze age, will find it difficult to believe 

 that, in the latter of those periods at least, beech- mast and beech- 

 trees had not been made available for feeding that animal ; especially 

 when they consider how freely intercourse was carried on between 

 Britain and Gaul, and how easily the seeds in question could and 

 would have been carried across the Channel. Botanists at least 

 (see De Candolle, 1. c., pp. 154, 689, and Jo.hns, I. c., p. 144) appear 

 to be agreed that the words * Materia cuj usque generis, ut in Gallia, 

 est, prceter fagum atque abietem ' (De Bello Gallico, v. 12) contain 

 one of the few errors fallen into by Ca?sar. Had this statement 

 related to Scotland it would probably have been correct, beech-mast 

 never having been found any more than ash-seeds in the peat- 

 mosses of Scotland, though both plants are now to be found even 

 in the extreme north of that country, and though both, I think, 

 must be held to be indigenous in South Britain. 



For these considerations and some others seem to me to outweigh 

 the views of Dr. Daubeny, expressed in 'Trees of the Ancients,' 1865, 

 p. 7, to the effect that the beech 'was not known in Holland nor pro- 

 bably in England or Ireland at the time of the Norman Conquest ; ' 

 views against which, as pointed out by Professor Pearson, 1. c., p. 48, 

 the mention of a ' bochholt ' in a charter of Offa, and of ' the old 

 beech ' in one of the Confessor, can be urged as regards Saxon times. 

 It is difficult also to reconcile them with the general fact stated by 



