132, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
manie places, especialle in Barkeshire, Oxford- 
shire, and Buckinghamshire, where they are 
greatlie cherished, and converted to sundrie uses 
by such as dwell about them.’ 
Since the time of Gilpin and Cobbett the 
economic importance of the beech has increased 
very considerably, and the prices commanded by 
it at present, running up to Is. 6d. per cubic 
foot, in Buckinghamshire and all around that 
district, for chair-making and various other pur- 
poses, make it deserving of attention and of 
improved methods of treatment in all woods 
grown for profit on the chalky or limy soils 
abounding from there westwards, following the 
Hampshire Downs and the Chiltern and Cotswold 
Hills, into Gloucestershire. This particular local 
industry goes back a long time, for Evelyn men- 
tions it among the uses of the wood, though he, 
too, considers beech ‘neither so apt for Timber, 
nor Fuel.’ The concluding portion of his, also 
very short, discourse on the beech illustrates one 
of the habits of Continental life of old so gra- 
phically and suggestively, as to be worth quoting : 
‘But there is yet another benefit which this Tree 
presents us; that its very /eaves which make a 
