1956 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



tricts of England, especially on chalky hills. Some, as we have seen (p. 21.), 

 are disposed to consider the tree as not aboriginal ; but with this supposition 

 we cannot agree. It abounds on the great ridge of chalk hills which passes 

 from Dorsetshire through Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent ; 

 branching out into Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire ; and it is 

 also found on the Stroudwater and Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, and 

 on the bleak banks of the Wye in Herefordshire and Monmouthshire. It 

 is particularly abundant in Buckinghamshire, where it forms extensive forests, 

 of great magnificence and beauty. It is seldom found mixed with other trees ; 

 its own dense head suffocating most other species, even when they are coeval 

 with it in point of age. Nothing, says South, will grow under the beech but 

 the holly and the truffle. It is rarely found in soil that is not more or less 

 calcareous; and it most commonly abounds on chalk. In some parts of 

 Hertfordshire, where the soil is a calcareous clay full of flints, the beech 

 attains a large size. The tree is not indigenous to Scotland or Ireland. 



History. The beech was known to both the Greeks and Romans ; though 

 some doubts have arisen as to the names by which it was designated by these 

 nations. By Theophrastus it was called Oxua, and by Dioscorides Phegos. 

 Theophrastus also describes a tree under the name of Phegos; but he places 

 it among the oaks ; and it is now generally supposed to be the Quercus E's- 

 culus L. Doubts have also arisen as to whether our beech was the l<agus of 

 the Romans, from the assertion of Caesar, in his Commentaries, that he found 

 no -Fagi in Britain (see p. 21.) ; but that the T^agus of Pliny and Virgil was the 

 same as that of Linnaeus, is thus proved by Fee, in his Flore de Virgil. " Pliny 

 (lib. xvi. cap. 6.) says, * Fagi glans, nuclei similis, triangula cute includitur.' 

 (The mast of the beech is like a nut, included in a triangular case.) The 

 epithets applied to this tree by Virgil are all applicable to our beech. It is 

 spreading: ' Tityre, tu patuke recubans sub tegmine fagi.' (Ed. i. 1.) 

 It has dense tufted foliage ; and, consequently, its branches afford a shade im- 

 pervious to the rays of the sun : ' Tantum inter densas, umbrosa cacumina, 

 fagos' (Eel. ii. 3.); and, as it lives nearly as long as the oak, it is well 

 entitled to the epithet of old : Aut hie ad veteres fagos. (Eel. Hi. 12.) It is 

 also one of the loftiest trees of the European forests : * Caeditur et tilia 

 ante jugo laevis, altaque fagus.' (Geor. i. 173.) It thus appears that the 

 .Fagus of Virgil agrees in every respect with the beech tree of the moderns." 

 (Fl. de Virg., p. 54.) The ancients seem to have set considerable value on the 

 beech mast as an article of food. Pliny speaks of the mast (glandem) of the 

 beech as being the sweetest of all (dulcissima omnium) ; and states that, at 

 the siege of Chios, the besieged lived for some time entirely on beech mast. 

 Vessels made of beech wood were used in the Roman sacrifices; and the nut 

 was in repute as a medicine. Pliny and Virgil both tell us that the beech 

 was grafted on the chestnut ; a circumstance which has called forth much 

 discussion among commentators. Servius thinks it absurd that a barren 

 beech, as he calls it, should be engrafted on a fruitful chestnut ; and fancies 

 that there is an error in the text. Grimoaldus thinks that the poet means a 

 wild sort of chestnut, which might be used as a stock on which to graft the 

 beech ; and Dr. Trapp highly approves of this reading. These, and other 

 commentators, Martyn observes, proceed on the supposition that chestnuts 

 were esteemed, in Virgil's time, as much superior to beech mast as they are 

 now ; the contrary to which, he says, might easily be proved. Pliny men- 

 tions chestnuts as a very inferior kind of fruit, and seems to express surprise 

 that nature should take such care of the nuts, which he calls " vilissima," 

 as to defend them with a prickly husk ; while the mast of the beech was reck- 

 oned a very sweet nut, and was in use both as food and medicine. Pliny 

 frequently mentions the beech in his Natural History. In one place, he says 

 that " there was a little hill called Corne, in the territory of Tusculum, not 

 far from the city of Rome, that was clad and beautified with a grove and tufts 

 of beech trees, which were as even and round in the head as if they had been 

 curiously trimmed with garden shears." He adds : " This grove was, in old 



