AMENTIFERZ. 165 
ety long slender brown scales. Leaves on petioles commonly about 
3 inch long; the lamina 2 to 3 inches, shortly acuminate, somewhat 
plicate, with 6 to 8 veins running straight from the midrib to the margins. 
Stipules scarious, resembling the bud scales, very caducous. Flowers 
appearing with the young leaves, on the shoots produced from buds 
of the preceding year. Male catkins on stalks 1 to 2 inches long, 
ot ovoid, with very long weak stamens and pale yellow anthers. 
emale flowers above the male, on stout peduncles, generally shorter 
than those of the male catkins. Involucre in fruit 4-cleft, hairy with 
numerous subulate bristles or processes. Nuts orange- brown, $ inch 
long, triquetrous, smooth and shining, with a small ‘triangular basal 
scar. Leaves deep green, shining above, paler beneath. The cotyle- 
dons are remarkable in germination for their great breadth, which 
makes them pseudo-connate. 
Common Beech. 
French, Hétre fayard. German, Roth Buche. 
This is one of the most useful, and perhaps the most beautiful, of our woodland 
trees. Its appearance is familiar to most people, and it is one of the few trees whose 
features are so marked that our artists find no difficulty in transferring it to canvas, 
and making it recognisable. Gilpin, however, does not consider the beech tree as the 
most picturesque of our forest trees. He finds fault with its skeleton, with its knotted 
and irregular trunk, and says, “The branches are fantastically wreathed and dispro- 
portioned, turning awkwardly among each other, and running often into long unvaried 
lines, without any of the strength and firmness that we admire in the oak, or of that 
easy simplicity which pleases us in the ash; in short, we rarely see a beech well 
ramified. In full leaf it is equally unpleasing ; it has the appearance of an overgrown 
bush. Virgil, indeed, was right in choosing the beech for its shade. No tree forms 
so complete a roof. This bushiness gives great heaviness to the tree, which is always 
a deformity. What lightness it has disgusts. You will see a light branch issuing 
from a heavy mass, and though such pendent branches are often beautiful in them- 
selves, they are seldom in harmony with the tree. On the whole, the massy full- 
grown luxuriant beech is rather a displeasing tree.” 
We cannot agree with these severe remarks, and we are glad to find that a different 
view is taken of the merits of the beech tree by other writers. Sir T. D. Lauder 
~ observes on Gilpin’s observations, that they afford “one of the instances in which the 
author’s love for the art of representing the objects of nature with the pencil, and his 
associations with the pleasures of that art, have very much led him astray.” He 
adds, “Some of the very circumstances which render it unpicturesque, or, in other 
words, which render it an unmanageable subject of art, highly contribute to render 
it beautiful. The glazed surface of the leaf, which brightly reflects the sun’s rays, 
and the gentle emotions of light, if we may venture so to express ourselves, which 
steal over the surface of its foliage, with the breathing of the balmy breeze, although 
difficult, or rather impossible, to be represented by the artist, are accidents which are 
productive of very pleasing ideas in the mind of the feeling observer of nature.’ 
“ They make spreading trees and noble shades,” says old Evelyn. Mr. Loudon quotes 
Sir T. D. Lauder, who says, ‘‘ We remember to have been much gratified with the 
effect of this tree when all other trees were absent; it was in Italy, on the very 
summit of the Valombrosan Appenines. During our progress through the scorching 
