164 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
seeds of its magnificent rival. The husks of the sweet chestnut are like hedgehogs, 
while those of the horse-chestnut have scarcely any prickles. Moreover, the sweet 
chestnut is usually flat on one side, and often upon two sides, owing to several nuts 
having stood side by side in the involucrum, and at the apex there are seen the 
withered styles and stigmas. The seeds of the horse-chestnut, on the other hand, 
have a perfectly round and even surface, showing only a broad scar at the part where 
they were attached to the inside of the capsule. 
GENUS IT—FAGUS. Tournef. 
Male flowers in compact subglobular catkins, with very small 
caducous catkin-scales: floral-scales combined into a cuplike peri 
anth (?) with 5 or 6 segments: stamens 8 to 12, inserted on a glan 
dular disk at the bottom of the perianth. Female flowers 2 to 3 together, 
rarely solitary, surrounded by a common urceolate involucre, the 
outside of which is furnished with numerous linear bracts imbricated 
in many rows: perianth completely adherent to the ovary and produced 
beyond it, the limb laciniate, with 5 to 8 segments: ovary with 3 cells; 
ovules 2 in each cell; styles 3, with the stigmas lateral, erect, but 
slightly recurved at the apex. Nuts ovoid-triquetrous, 2, more rarely 
1 or 3, enclosed in a common coriaceous bristly-spiny ovoid involucre, 
which opens by 4 valves; pericarp tough and leathery. Cotyledons 
irregularly folded, filling the seed, coherent, fleshy. 
Trees with long slender scaly buds and deciduous repand or serrate 
leaves. Flowers monecious, appearing with or shortly after the 
leaves. 
The derivation of the name of this genus is from the Greek word gayety (phagein), 
to eat, because the nuts were used as food in the early ages. 
SPECIES I—FAGUS SYLVATICA. Linn. 
Prate MCCXCI. 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ. et Helv. Vol. XII. Tab. DCXXIX. Fig. 1304. 
Leaves oval, obsoletely serrate, pilose on the petioles, veins, and 
margins, especially when young. 
In woods and on chalky hills. Not uncommon, and doubtless 
truly native in the south of England; probably not native in the 
north and in Scotland. Not indigenous in Ireland. 
England, [Scotland, Ireland]. Tree. Late Spring and early 
Summer. 
A large tree, growing to 50 or 80 feet high, or even more, with 
spreading flexuous branches and very smooth grey bark. Buds with 
