THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES 



trees and form a dense copse. Near the foot of the 

 Hemlock Hill by the collection of Arborvitae and 

 Yews in the Arnold Arboretum, there is a splendid 

 example of this type of growth of American Beech. 



This distribution of the various species of Beech is 

 remarkable, and is a good illustration of the isolation 

 of members of a genus which I referred to in the sec- 

 ond chapter. The range of the Common Beech has 

 been given. The American Beech is distributed from 

 Nova Scotia to the northern shores of Lake Huron 

 and northern Wisconsin; south to western Florida, 

 west to southeastern Missouri and Trinity River, 

 Texas. It grows mixed with other trees, and occa- 

 sionally with Yellow Birch makes nearly pure woods. 

 Outside of America it has not proved amenable to 

 cultivation and in Europe only a few small examples 

 exist. In Japan Fagus Sieboldii grows from the 

 southern end of Hokkaido, through Hondo, the main 

 island, and Shikoku, to Mt. Kirishima in the south of 

 Kyushu; in places it forms pure woods, though usually 

 it is merely the dominant tree in the mixed forests 

 of certain zones on the mountains. The other Japa- 

 nese Beech (F. japonica) is more rare and I have seen 

 it only in the Nikko region where it grows mixed 

 with Siebold's Beech and other trees at from 3,500 

 to 5,000 feet altitude. On the tiny Dagelet Island, 

 a lonely spot in the Japan Sea some fifty miles from 

 160 



