MAY 99 



took ine back to the beechwoods of Roskilde, not far 

 from Copenhagen, recalling me to my fealty to the 

 beech. In a plebiscite of modern tree-growers (a fine 

 subject for next silly season), while the oak doubtless 

 would head the poll for majesty, the prize for sheer 

 beauty would surely go to the beech, for there is no 

 fairer sight in nature than a beechwood in May. 



Of beeches there are two types, each unrivalled in 

 its way. There are the beeches that soar aloft on tall, 

 clean boles, with not a branch for forty or fifty feet, 

 whereof you shall find no nobler examples than in Lord 

 Brownlow's park at Ashridge. These have gone 

 through the kindly discipline of close forest, or they 

 never had attained their lordly stature before being 

 ranged in groves and groups. The monarch of that 

 demesne, the king beech, is now no more, having suc- 

 cumbed to storm about the year 1891. Mr. Elwes 

 records that it had a clean shaft of about ninety feet, 

 and after fifteen feet of the butt, which was partly 

 rotten, had been removed, the rest panned out to the 

 tune of 480 cubic feet of sound timber, without reckon- 

 ing the branches. The royal corpse was bought by a 

 local timber merchant for 36. l The queen beech 

 remains to this day, 135 feet in height, without a 

 branch for eighty feet, girthing 12 feet 3 inches at the 

 height of a man's breast. 



The other type of beech is the spreading kind, such 

 as has never encountered competition with near neigh- 

 bours. I stood last week within the compass of one of 

 this sort, the hugest beech in the United Kingdom 



1 The Trees of Oreat Britain and Ireland, vol. i. p. 20. 



