112 FAMILIAR TREES 



timber of the Beech is close and even in texture, 

 with a fine silky grain, and, being easily worked 

 and fairly strong and durable, is in demand for 

 a variety of purposes. If wholly submerged or 

 quite dry it keeps well, and has therefore been 

 used for keels and for piles, whilst on the con- 

 tinent it is much used for railway- sleepers, for 

 sabots and for charcoal. Though used in turnery, 

 its chief use with us now is chair-making. As the 

 stem commonly reaches a girth of ten or twelve 

 feet, and occasionally of from eighteen to twenty 

 feet or more, and adds perhaps on an average an 

 inch to its diameter in five and a half years, this 

 species seems to reach the age of from 250 to 400 

 years. The Bicton Beech in Devonshire has a 

 girth of twenty-nine feet ; the King's Beech, at 

 Ashridge, Herts, is 118 feet in height; and one of 

 those in Norbury Park, Surrey, is stated to reach 

 160 feet ; but many of the trees of largest girth 

 are gouty old pollards, like those at Burnham, 

 whose decapitated trunks have grown out into 

 gnarled excrescences that are very misleading as 



to age. 



The brown nuts or " mast," once so valuable 

 a source of rustic wealth, when Gurth and Wamba 

 pastured the swine of the Saxon thane in the 

 forest, are still used in France as a food for 

 poultry and pheasants, and are stated to contain 

 from seventeen to twenty per cent, of an oil 

 suitable for burning, and used occasionally instead 

 of butter in cooking. It is by this " mast " that 

 the Beech is commonly propagated. 



