160 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
The showy and beautiful flowers are in roundish tassels or 
heads, dependent by threadlike, silky stalks, of one or two 
inches in length, from the midst of the young leaves of a newly 
opened bud, whose long, delicate, ribbon-like scales are still ad- 
hering. Each flower is a hairy or silky, bell-shaped cup, with 
its border divided into six segments, and contains usually from 
six to twelve stamens. The fruit is ona hairy footstalk, from 
the axil of a leaf. The footstalk enlarges upwards into four 
fleshy, lanceolate scales, fringed, and set with stiff, sometimes 
double prickles. As it ripens, these open, disclosing two prisma- 
tic triangular nuts, whose edges thin out into a waved border. 
The fruit, called beech mast, is a rich, oily nut. It is eagerly 
devoured by pigeons, partridges, squirrels, and other wild 
animals. Bears are said to have been very fond of it, and 
swine rapidly fatten upon it. Most varietics are so small as 
not very richly to repay the trouble of gathering, drying, and 
opening them. Fortunately, this is not the case with all, as 
the mast is a delicious nut. In France, the beech: mast is 
much used for making oil, which is highly valued for burning 
in lamps, and for cooking. In parts of the same country, the 
nuts, roasted, serve as a substitute for coflee.* 
The leaves were formerly used in Britain, and are, to this 
day, in some parts of Europe, for filling beds.t Evelyn says 
that, ‘‘its very leaves, which make a natural and most agree- 
uble canopy all the summer, being gathered about the fall, 
and somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, afford the 
best and the easiest mattresses in the world, to Jay 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 thus used by divers persons of quality in Dauphiné; 
and, in Switzerland, I have sometimes lain on them to my very 
sreat refreshment. So as, of this tree it may properly be said, 
‘Silva domus, cubilia frondes.’—Juv. 
‘The wood’s an house, the leaves a bed.’”’—Sylva, Hunter’s ed., p. 141-2. 
“We can,” says Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, after quoting this 
passage, ‘‘ from our own experience, bear testimony to the truth 
* Loudon’s Arboretum, p. 1963. f Ibid. 
