12 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



forms the ti'mber line, it would be remarkable if the beech had not in early days 

 gained a footing in Scotland and Ireland. The mere negative evidence is of little 

 value, as scarcely any scientific work has yet been done in the way of exploration of 

 the peat-mosses and other recent deposits ; and the woods, from which are made the 

 handles of numerous prehistoric implements preserved in our museums, have rarely 

 been examined/ 



The beech occurs in a wild state throughout the greater part of Northern, 

 Central, and Western Europe, usually growing gregariously in forests which, when 

 undisturbed by man, have a tendency to spread and take the place of oak, which, 

 owing to its inability to support such dense shade, is often suppressed by the beech. 



In Norway, according to Schubeler,^ it is called bok, and is wild only near 

 Laurvik, where he believes it to be truly indigenous, and is a small tree, the 

 largest he measured being 7 feet 4 inches in girth. At Hosanger, however, 

 a planted beech had in 1864 attained 75 feet at 81 years old, with a diameter of 

 27 inches. It ripens seed as far north as Trondhjem in good years, and exists in 

 Nordland as far north as lat. 67. 56. 



In Sweden its most northerly wild habitat is Elfkalven, lat. 6o.35, though 

 it has been planted as far north as lat. 64. 



In Russia the beech extends only a little way, its eastern limit in Europe 

 passing the Prussian coast of the Baltic between Elbing and Konigsberg, about 54 30' 

 N. lat., and running south from Konigsberg, where the last spontaneous beeches 

 occur on the Brandenburg estate, continuing through Lithuania, eastern Poland, 

 Volhynia, where beech woods still occur between lat. 52 and 50, and PodoHa to 

 Bessarabia. It is absent from the governments of Kief and Kherson, but re- 

 appears in the Crimea, where, however, it is only met with in the mountains of the 

 south-east coast. In the Caucasus, Persia, and Asia Minor it is replaced by the 

 closely allied species, Fagus orientalis. 



In Finland and at St. Petersburg it exists as a bush only, but is not wild. 

 On the southern shores of the Baltic it forms large forests, and in Denmark is 

 one of the most abundant and valuable timber trees, growing to as large a size 

 and forming as clean trunks as it does farther south. Lyell speaks of it as 

 follows :' " In the time of the Romans the Danish isles were covered as now with 

 magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flourish more 

 luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries seem to have done little or 

 nothing towards modifying the character of the forest vegetation. Yet in the 

 antecedent bronze period there were no beech trees, or at most but a few stragglers, 

 the country being then covered with oak." 



At page 415 he says further " In Denmark great changes were taking place in 

 the vegetation. The pine, or Scotch fir, buried in the oldest peat, gave place at 

 length to the oak ; and the oak, after flourishing for ages, yielded in its turn to the 



In a paper by H. B. Watt on the " Scottish Forests in Early Historic Times," printed in Annah of the Andersonian 

 Nat. Soc. ii. 91, Glasg., 1900, which contains many interesting particulars of the oak and other trees, no mention is made 

 of the Beech. In the Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary {\%2%), faidhbhile is given as the word for beech ; here faidA is 

 cognate with/<j?jM, Hi/e being one of the Gaelic terms for tree. This name is also known in Ulster. 



Schubeler, Viridarium Norvegicum, vol. i. 521. ' Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 2nd. ed. 1873, PP- '7. 4'S- 



