THE BEECH. 



347 



his Gleanings, " It is impossible to view these 

 * sires of the Forest/ without feeling a mixture 

 of admiration and wonder. The size of some 

 of them is enormous ; one near Sawyer's Lodge 

 measures, at six feet from the ground, thirty- 

 six feet round. It is now protected from 

 injury, and Nature seems to be doing her best 

 towards repairing the damage which its exposure 

 to the attacks of man and beast have produced. 

 It must once have been almost hollow, but the 

 vacuum has been nearly filled up. One might 

 almost fancy that liquid w^ood, which had after- 

 wards hardened, had been poured into the tree. 

 The twistings and distortions of this huge mass 

 have a curious and striking effect. There is no 

 bark on this extraneous substance, but the surface 

 is smooth, hard, and without any appearance of 

 decay." 



In Buckinghamshire, a country which is in- 

 debted to this tree for its name * (Buchen-Heim, 

 the home or land of Beeches,) stand the Burnham 

 Beeches, immortalised by the poet Gray, who 

 gives the following description of them to Horace 

 Walpole : — I have, at the distance of half a 

 mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar 

 call it a common) all my own, at least as good as 

 so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. 

 It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices ; 



* "Here," says Strutt, "the Beech reigns in undivided sovereignty, 

 scarcely admitting an Oak to share its domain, so that we may easily 

 imagine how it must have overrun the country before the opposing 

 influence of agriculture was known ; indeed, we are told by old his- 

 torians , the country was rendered impassable by the thickness of its 

 woods, and the shelter they afforded for marauders and thieves, until 

 several of them were cut down by Leofstar^, Abbot of St. Albans." 

 {DelicicB Sylvarum.) 



