112 FAMILIAR TREES 
timber of the Beech is close and even in texture, 
with a fine silky grain, and, being easily worked 
and fairly strong and durable, is in demand for 
a variety of purposes. If wholly submerged or 
quite dry it keeps well, and has therefore been 
used for keels and for piles, whilst on the con- 
tinent it is much used for railway-sleepers, for 
sabots and for charcoal. Though used in turnery, 
its chief use with us now is chair-making. As the 
stem commonly reaches a girth of ten or twelve 
feet, and occasionally of from eighteen to twenty 
feet or more, and adds perhaps on an average an 
inch to its diameter in five and a half years, this 
species seems to reach the age of from 250 to 400 
years. The Bicton Beech in Devonshire has a 
girth of twenty-nine feet; the King’s Beech, at 
Ashridge, Herts, is 118 feet in height; and one of 
those in Norbury Park, Surrey, is stated to reach 
160 feet; but many of the trees of largest girth 
are gouty old pollards, like those at Burnham, 
whose decapitated trunks have grown out into 
gnarled excrescences that are very misleading as 
to age. 
The brown nuts or “ mast,’ once so valuable 
a source of rustic wealth, when Gurth and Wamba 
pastured the swine of the Saxon thane in the 
forest, are still used in France as a food for 
poultry and pheasants, and are stated to contain 
from seventeen to twenty per cent. of an oil 
suitable for burning, and used occasionally instead 
of butter in cooking. It is by this “mast” that 
the Beech is commonly propagated. 
