324 APPENDIX. 



the two plants being so commonly wedded in Italian husbandry, as in 

 both Italian and English poetry. On the other hand, the readiness with 

 which the wych-elm ripens its seeds, and its power of maintaining itself 

 and flourishing even in the highlands of Scotland, to say nothing of its 

 trivial name, the nationality of which is disputed, would appear to show 

 that it at least is an indigenous tree ; and it may consequently have 

 contributed in larger proportions and given pro tanto a larger share of 

 beauty to the prehistoric landscape than it does now to ours. 



Dwellers on or near the chalk districts of England are too familiar 

 with the conspicuous and beautiful, though common, seedlings of the 

 beech not to feel considerable doubt as to the accuracy of Julius Caesar's 

 statement that the tree though present in Gaul was wanting in Britain. 

 Antiquaries who are familiar with the fact of the great abundance of 

 the bones of the domestic pig in British barrows, both of the stone and 

 of the bronze age, will find it difficult to believe that, in the latter of 

 those periods at least, beech-mast and beech-trees had not been made 

 available for feeding that animal ; especially when they consider how 

 freely intercourse was carried on between Britain and Gaul, and how 

 easily the seeds in question could and would have been carried across the 

 Channel. Botanists at least (see De Candolle, I.e., pp. 154, 689, and 

 Johns, I.e., p. 144) appear to be agreed that the words 'Materia cujus- 

 que generis, ut in Gallia, est, praeter fagum atque abietem' (' De Bello 

 Gallico/ v. 1 2) contain one of the few errors fallen into by Caesar. Had 

 this statement related to Scotland it would probably have been correct, 

 beech-mast never having been found any more than ash-seeds in the 

 peat-mosses of Scotland, though both plants are now to be found even in 

 the extreme north of that country, and though both, I think, must be 

 held to be indigenous in South Britain, 



For these considerations and some others seem to me to outweigh the 

 views of Dr. Daubeny, expressed in 'Trees of the Ancients,' 1865, p. 7, 

 to the effect that the beech ' was not known in Holland nor probably in 

 England or Ireland at the time of the Norman Conquest ; ' views against 

 which, as pointed out by Professor Pearson, 1. c, p. 48, the mention of a 

 ' bochholt ' in a charter of Offa, and of ' the old beech ' in one of the Con- 

 fessor, can be urged as regards Saxon times. It is difficult also to 

 reconcile them with the general fact stated by De Candolle, 1. c, p. 689, 

 on the authority of Davies (' Welsh Botany,' p. 90), that dans le pays de 

 Galles Ffa-wydden (wydden etant une desinence commune aux arbres et 

 Ffa le nom proprement dit) was the name for this tree ; or with the 

 special exemplification of this with which the "Welsh name for Hereford, a 

 city with beech- trees near it, ' Tre fawydd,' furnishes us (see Camden's 



