AMENTIFERZ. 167 
state as well as in the dry. In France and Germany, where wood is the prevailing 
fuel, this beech-wood is used largely for the purpose. When carbonised, it forms 
excellent charcoal, which is capable of being manufactured imto gunpowder, though 
inferior to the lighter kinds. 
The leaves, gathered green and dried, were formerly used in Britain, and still are on 
the Continent, for filling beds. Evelyn says, ‘‘ Being gathered about the fall, and 
somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, they afford the best and easiest mattresses 
in the world to lay under our quilts, instead of straw, because, besides their tenderness 
and loose-lying together, they continue sweet for seven or eight years, long before 
which time straw becomes musty and hard. They are used by divers persons of 
quality in Dauphiné and in Switzerland. I have sometimes lain on them, to my very 
great refreshment. So as of this tree it may very properly be said, ‘the wood as 
house, the leaves a bed.’”’ 
The triangalar nut-like fruit of the beech, called beech-mast in England, and la faine 
in France, has a taste somewhat like that of the hazel-nut. It contains a large 
quantity of fixed oil, together with starch and sugar, and is very nutritious and fatten- 
ing to oxen, swine, and poultry. The flesh of pigs which are fed on it does not keep 
so well as that of those fattened on acorns. The fat also is more oily and more lable 
to waste. Beech-mast is much sought after by wild animals, particularly by badgers, 
by squirrels, and dormice, which last Evelyn says, ‘“ Harbouring in the hollow trees, 
grow so fat that in some countries abroad they take infinite numbers of them, I 
suppose, to eat.” In Britain the only use made of the mast is to turn swine, deer, 
and poultry into beech-woods to pick it up; but in France it forms an important 
article of domestic consumption for making oil. It is considered not only good for 
burning in lamps, but for cooking purposes, especially for frying fish. The seed is 
gathered when quite ripe by shaking the branches of the tree, and collecting the fruit 
in a cloth spread below. It is dried under cover, and ground into paste in a mill; 
the mass is then subjected to pressure in bags of hair or linen; one-sixth part of the 
weight of the dry seed is sometimes obtained ; but the produce varies according to 
the season. In the reign of Queen Anne, one Aaron Hill, a poet, formed a company 
for the extraction of oil from beech-nuts, and proposed to pay off the National Debt 
with the profits ; but after the expenditure of much money, it shared the fate of so 
many more modern schemes, and fell to the ground. It is probable that a warmer 
climate than ours is required for the full development and ripening of the beech-mast, 
so as to make it valuable for oil. The cake left after the extraction of the oil is an 
excellent cattle food, but seems to disagree with horses, on account of a peculiar 
principle which exists in the seed, and is called fagine, and possesses narcotic 
properties. 
The bark of the beech contains a considerable quantity of tannin and gallic acid, 
but is not so valuable for tanning leather as that of many other trees. The young 
branches and waste wood are largely consumed in the manufacture of acetic or pyro- 
lioneous acid ; they likewise yield a considerable quantity of potash. 
The finest beech trees in Britain are said to grow in Hampshire, and there is a 
curious legend respecting those in the Forest of St. Leonard, in that county. This 
forest, which was the abode of St. Leonard, abounds in noble beech trees, and the 
Saint was particularly fond of reposing under their shade, but when he did so he was 
annoyed during the day by vipers, and at night by the singing of the nightingale. 
Accordingly, he prayed that they might be removed; and such was the eflicacy of 
his prayers that since his time in that forest 
