The Hornbeams 



base generally shows a few furrows, and some minor roughness 

 near the ground, but above, the smoothness is unbroken. 



The hornbeam grows often in thickets, sometimes as scattered, 

 single trees, in marshy ground and along streams. It is a pretty 

 tree, with blue-green leaves that turn to orange and scarlet in the 

 autumn. It is coming into notice as an ornamental tree, now that 

 people are learning that the best way to make a park is to do less 

 levelling and filling, and plant in the lower ground trees and plants 

 that choose such situations naturally. 



The anguish of working in this wood was experienced by the 

 early colonists, who appreciated its value. "The New England 

 Prospect" says: "The Home bound tree is a tough kind of wood 

 that requires so much paines in riving as is almost incredible, being 

 the best for to make bolles and dishes, not being subject to cracke 

 or leake." Heads of beetles, stocks, mill cogs, yoke timbers, 

 levers — for such uses it is ideal wood. 



The European Hornbeam (Carpinus Betulus, Linn.) 

 ranges from Scandinavia and England to the Caucasus, and is a 

 beautiful tree of no small note. The "hornbeams" of ancient ox 

 yokes wore indefinitely, becoming as hard and smooth as horn. 

 The trees grow in cold, forbidding situations, where most trees 

 fail, and so serve as windbreaks and as covers of barren clay soil. 

 The wood makes excellent fuel and charcoal, beside its special 

 uses to the turner. In the old days of formal gardens, the horn- 

 beam was popular, for it suffered itself to be clipped with as much 

 patience as the linden, the beech or the yew. It was a famous 

 hedge tree. The Germans made fences by planting rows of the 

 saplings leaning so that each two plants formed a cross. The 

 bark was scraped at the point of intersection, and then the two 

 were bound together with straw, until they grew fast to each 

 other. Careful pruning made of this in a short time a beautiful 

 and impenetrable wall. Miles of this fencing were seen in Evelyn's 

 day. The Germans also planted the trees near the gates of the 

 great cities, training their branches to cover arbours "for con- 

 venience of the people to sit and solace in." Travellers in Europe 

 will find the hornbeam still much used as in earlier centuries. 



China, Japan and India have native hornbeams; there are 

 nine or ten Species in all. The race is old — the rocks show fossils 

 of extinct species that once inhabited western America. 



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