QUERNALS. 355— 
the adjoining States, growing at a height of five or six thousand feet 
above the sea. Some of them, as the Iron Wood Oak (Q. sideraxyla) 
and the Large-leaved Oak (Q. macrophylla), trees either yielding 
valuable timber, or of great beauty. The large-leaved oak is, 
perhaps, the finest oak in the world; its leaves, which are downy 
beneath, tapering at the point, and heart-shaped at the base, 
being from 12 and 18 inches long, and broad in proportion ; and 
its acorns are large as French walnuts. 
_ The Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is one of our best known and most 
mportant forest-trees. It attains great dimensions, sometimes 
rising to the height of 100 feet with us, and even 120 feet in 
more favoured climates; its smooth, strong stem, which becomes 
ashy grey by exposure to the weather, rises round and straight 
through its foliage, remaining visible to its first branch, so that a 
Beech wood presents a clear vista, their thick leafy heads prevent- 
ing brushwood from growing under them. It is sometimes free 
from branches to the height of 60 feet. Its leaves, petiolate, ovate 
oblong, are generally pointed or acuminate, loosely dentated, 
Waving, and coriaceous, with prominent ciliated veins: silky at 
the edges ; they are alternate, and accompanied by two brownish 
stipules; they are shining and thin, changing in the autumn to 
4 brownish russet. The flowers, which are unisexular, appear at 
the same time as the leaves. The male flowers are disposed in long, 
pendent; globular catkins; with long peduncles; and very small 
Pendent, caducous scales. The female flowers are enveloped, to 
the number of two or three, in a common two-lobed prickly 
Myolucre, covered exteriorly with a number of filaments; the 
fruit is the Beech-nut. The sced contains an embryo without 
albumen, the cotyledons of which are irregularly folded up inside, 
and strictly coherent. The oil obtained from this seed is both 
_ fatable and a good lamp oil. 
| Among the Beeches many handsome varieties, well adapted for 
®mamental purposes, from their variously coloured foliage, have 
‘riginated. §. purpurea, the Purple Beech, has the young buds 
and shoots of a rich rose colour. In the Copper Beech (S. cuprea) 
: they are pale copper colour ; in S. variegatus they are white and red, 
interspersed with streaks of red and purple. In some, the leaves 
AA 
