HOW TO GROW GOOD TIMBER. 309 



the inorells from this park several times, and always 

 found them delicious, and can recommend them 

 stuffed with sausage-meat and fried, as a dish for an 

 epicure : we have seen them exposed for sale in the 

 greengrocers' shops of the good old town of Ciren- 

 cester. 



But we are sadly digressing from the subject of the 

 beech tree in his history as a forest and ornamental 

 tree. Under the latter aspect, then, most authors, 

 except Gilpin, view the beech to hold a very high 

 place. Coleman, in his "Woodlands," considers 

 that, — 



Among our truly indigenous forest-trees, the beech must certainly 

 rank as second only to the oak for majesty and picturesqueness ; 

 while, for the union of grace and nobility, it may claim precedence 

 over every other member of our sylva. 



Having said this, we must, as a matter of course, dissent from the 

 opinion of Gilpin, the highly-gifted author of " Forest Scenery," who 

 has, as we think, unjustly impugned the ornamental character of this 

 geuerally favourite tree, and this because he had some crotchets of 

 his own about landscape composition, and the shape that trees ought 

 to take to make them good subjects for the pencil. The beech did 

 not happen to fit itself to his theory, and so he quarrelled with it, 

 and called it hard names. 



Any one who has ever seen a well-grown beech 

 tree, such as was once our delight to visit at Hartley 

 Bottom, near the source of the Thames, or who has 

 seen such masses of beech glowing with autumnal 

 tints as may be witnessed in a journey on the Great 

 Western Railway between Swindon and Cheltenham, 

 will never speak disparagingly of the beech, which 

 we think noble, alike by itself as in masses, or as a 

 sylvan denizen with other trees. 



But it has other claims besides that of ornament ; 



