TREES OF AMERICA. 185 



and pressed very slowly, and the oil is drawn 

 off into casks, and left for several months to 

 settle and become fine ; at the end of about 

 six months it is fit to use, but it improves by 

 age, and keeps longer and better than any 

 other kind. In some parts of France they 

 make coffee, too, of beech-nuts ; they roast 

 them just as we do the real coffee, and I have 

 heard that one could scarcely tell the dif- 

 ference." 



" Oh, what a comfort that must be for poor 

 people who cannot afford to buy real coffee !" 



" Yes, I dare say it is ; and the French 

 people in general are very fond of coffee. 

 There is another tree that bears nuts very 

 much like those of the beech, only they are a 

 great deal smaller ; not as large as the pip of 

 an apple. It is called the hornbeam, and it 

 grows in all parts of the United States, but 

 most abundantly in the Southern. It is a 

 small tree, seldom growing more than twelve 

 or fifteen feet high ; the leaves are exactly like 

 beech-leaves, but riot half as large, and the 

 nuts, instead of being shut up in a husk, grow 

 in bunches of small leaves that hang from the 

 ends of the branches ; these little bunches re- 

 main on the tree long after the other leaves 



