THE HORNBEAM 19 



excellent firewood, it is seldom allowed to become 

 a timber tree, and almost all the old trees of the 

 species in this country are pollards. In these the 

 trunk is generally flattened and twisted, as though 

 composed of several stems grown together, or 

 " fasciated." This, in fact, does occur, as also 

 does "inosculation," or the union above of branches 

 which are separate below, a mode of growth 

 more characteristic, however, of the Beech, a 

 tree which the Hornbeam resembles in not a few 

 particulars. 



But the flattened or irregular outline of the 

 stem is due, in part at least, to an irregu- 

 larity in its internal structure, the medullary rays 

 being exceptionally large and wide apart, so as to 

 break up the annual rings of wood, and these 

 rings themselves have generally a very wavy and 

 irregular form. 



Specimens of Hornbeam were recorded by Loudon, 

 in 1838, at Melbury Park. Dorsetshire, and Fin- 

 borough Hall, Suffolk, which, sixty years of age, 

 were seventy-two feet and eighty feet respectively 

 in height, with a girth of over seven feet; whilst 

 a tree near Nantes, about a hundred years old, 

 was ninety feet high and eight feet round. It is, 

 however, never a very fast-growing tree, lengthening 

 from twelve to eighteen inches per annum for the 

 first ten years of its life, but increasing far more 

 slowly as it gets old, and not being apparently 

 very long-lived. 



The bark, which has tonic properties, is smooth, 

 and of a silvery light grey colour, much resem- 



