BEECH. 



4^ 



derable dm*ability when kept dry, the latter is speedi- 

 ly consumed by worming. 



The planter of beech should procure the kind * 

 with yellow- coloured wood, termed by joiners Yellow 

 Beech, in opposition to the kind with white wood, 

 called White Beech. The yellow grows faster and 

 straighter, and is cleaner and freer of black knots, 

 and also more pleasantly worked than the white, but 

 it corrupts much sooner in the bark when cut down. 

 This variety of beech, when properly trained, is pro- 

 bably the most profitable hard- wood that we can 

 raise ; when planked, it bends pleasantly under the 

 shipwright to the curvature of the vessel's side. The 

 tree is also much superior in size and grace of out- 

 line to the white. There are few planters who need 

 be put in mind that beech of small size, or of short or 

 crooked stem, is the least valuable of all timber. 

 Whoever plants with a view to profit will, therefore, 

 throw in only as many beech plants as may ultimate- 

 ly be required for standards, and these in the bosom 

 of plantations ; as it is seldom that beech attains to 

 much value in hedge-row or on the outskirts of woods, 



* We have often preferred the terms kind, breed, family, indi- 

 vidual, to genus, species, variety, subvariety, as the former seem 

 less definite. Were nature true to the latter classification as em- 

 ployed by botanists, it would be convenient. 



D 



