Fagus.] amentace.e. 4 71 



sides of the chalk ranges, are familiarly called hangers. In these places the tree 

 is essentially gregarious in its habit, covering large tracts of ground and taking 

 entire possession of the soil ; here, on the contrary, except where evidently planted, 

 it prevails sporadically, not evincing the same power of occupying, or disposition 

 to extend itself in masses. 



The silence, loveliness and gloom that reign within the deep recesses of large 

 Beech woods almost transport the wanderer in idea to the primEeval forests of the 

 Western World. 



I am not disposed to attach the least importance to the assertion of Caesar, so 

 often quoted in proof of the subsequent introduction amongst us of this tree, that 

 he found no Beech-timber in Britain. I feel an unwillingness to let the decision 

 of the question rest on a single word in the ' Commentaries,' which, supposing it 

 to refer solely to the subject before us, of which I am by no means convinced, may 

 have crept into the text, as at present received, through the ignorance and care- 

 lessness of transcribers or the eraendatory zeal of eaiTy commentators. Nature 

 herself contradicts the assertion in the exuberant profusion of Beech-wood with 

 which she has clothed our hills, and this, together with the known distribution of 

 the same tree in other parts of Europe, leaves us little cause for hesitation in 

 choosing between the evidence of our senses on the one hand, and the dictum 

 probably mistranscribed or misunderstood of a fallible and remote authority on 

 the other. 



There is a remarkable specimen of the rough-barked Beech in the New Forest, 

 on the Southampton and Christchurch road. The tree, which is of considerable 

 size and height, but entirely bereft of its lower branches, stands about 100 yards 

 from the road on the right-hand side going towards Christchurch, and within 500 

 yards of the turnpike-gate out of Lyndhurst, and is an object of curiosity and 

 attention to numbers passing that way. 



Castanea vesea (the Common Sweet or Spanish Chestnut) is here omitted, from 

 a conviction that it cannot with propriety be comprehended in the Isle-of- Wight 

 Flora, though found in situations, with us, to all appearances as perfectly natural 

 as in any part of the kingdom. In Lorden copse, near Shorwell, are several trees, 

 of considerable girth and of evidently great age, which in some seasons produce 

 small but well-flavoured fruit, as I learn from the country people, though in less 

 favourable years the nuts form but do not fill in the shell. We have just seen 

 however that even in the Beech the fruit is not always perfected, perhaps from 

 defective impregnation, as is often the case in plants with diclinous flowers. 



