470 
THE FOREST TREES OF BRITAIN. 
the exquisite natural Spire, and the really ver- 
dant, dense, massive foliage, clothing tin 
whole with an unfading array of scale armour, i 
form altogether the finest model of a pine that 
can be imagined. The cones too are worthy 
to grow on such a tree ; solid ponderous things, 
as large as a child's head — not a baby's head 
neither — with a fine embossed coat-of-mail, 
firmly seated on the beam-like branches, as if 
defying the winds to shake them. Mr. Mere- 
dith climbed very nearly to the summit of our 
tallest pine, and said lie had never seen any- 
thing more beautiful than the downward view 
into and over the mass of diverging branches 
spread forth beneath him. He brought me 
down one cone with its spray, if I may so call 
the armful of thick green shoots that sur- 
rounded it, and I was gazing on it for half the 
day after ; it was so different from anything I 
had ever seen before, so new, and so grandly 
beautiful. The rigidity of the foliage had a 
sculpture-like character, that made me think 
how exquisitely Gibbons would have wrought 
its image in some of his graceful and stately 
designs, had he ever seen the glorious tree. 
One grew near to the front verandah, and 
some of its enormous roots had spread under 
the heavy stone pavement, lifting it up in an 
arch, like a bridge. When the cones ripened, 
the large winged seeds fell out in great 
numbers ; they require to be planted imme- 
diately, as the oil in them quickly dries up, and 
with it the vegetative properties are lost.' 
"It was introduced into England in 1793, 
but as it requires protection during the win- 
ter, its dimensions must be limited to the size 
of the conservatory in which it stands. ' It 
is a highly interesting fact,' says Dr. Lindley, 
' that a plant very nearly the same as this 
araucaria certainly once grew in Great Bri- 
tain. Remains of it have been found in the 
lias of Dorsetshire, and have been figured 
under the name of Araucaria primceva.' " — 
Pp. 425—432. 
" THE HORNBEAM. 
" Carpinus Betulus. 
"Natural Order — Amentace^:. 
" Class — Moncecia. Order — Polyandria. 
" Of all our indigenous forest-trees, perhaps 
no one is so little known as the hornbeam ; 
nor is this surprising, for although it fre- 
quently reaches a height of fifty or sixty feet, 
it has no strongly-marked distinctive charac- 
ter, and is often mistaken for some kind of 
elm, to which its foliage bears a great resem- 
blance. It is found in most of the temperate 
countries of Europe and Asia, and is far from 
uncommon in several of the counties of Eng- 
land ; in some it is so abundant, that it forms 
(as Sir J. Smith observes) a principal part of 
the ancient forests on the north and east sides 
of London : such as Epping, Finchley, &c. 
By the Greeks it was called Zugia, or ' yoke- 
tree,' from the use to which its timber was 
applied ; the Latins call it Carpinns, the 
name by which it is still known to botanists. 
"It has a straight and tolerably smooth 
trunk, which is slender and very frequently 
flattened, twisted, or otherwise irregular in 
shape, and is subdivided into a large number of 
long tapering branches, which diverge in such 
a way that the main stem is generally lost in 
the confused mass at some distance below the 
summit. The branches are remarkably liable 
to unite when they touch in crossing, hence 
very curious appearances are sometimes pro- 
duced. The outline of the head is round, and 
possesses little picturesque beauty. The 
leaves are shaped somewhat like those of the 
beech, but are rough and notched at the edge 
like those of the elm ; they may be distin- 
guished from the former by their roughness, 
and from the latter by their being plaited 
when young, and by having numerous, re- 
gular, strongly marked veins. Like the beech, 
too, they retain their withered foliage on the 
young branches all the winter. The horn- 
beam when young is also very similar in habit 
to the beech, but the latter may immediately 
be detected, on examination, by its glossy 
leaves. The flowers appear soon after the 
leaves, in April, growing in catkins of two 
kinds, of which the fertile are succeeded by 
clusters of small angular nuts each seated at 
the bottom of a leafy cup. When these are 
once formed, the tree which bears them can- 
not be mistaken, for no other British tree 
bears fruit of the same kind. The leaf buds 
are longer and sharper than those of the elm. 
" Owing to its partaking of several of the 
properties of other trees, some of the old writers 
were puzzled to find its place in the system. 
Pliny probably saw some resemblance between 
its clusters of* nuts and the keys of the maple, 
for he places it among the ten kinds of maple, 
but adds, that others considered it to belong 
to a distinct genus. Its second name, Betulus, 
would seem to imply that it was, by some of 
the early botanists, considered a kind of birch, 
and one of its old English names, ' Witch- 
hasell,' points to the supposition that it was a 
kind of hazel. Gerard says, ' Itgrowes great 
and very like unto the elme or wich hasell tree ; 
having a great body, the wood or timber 
whereof is better for arrowes and shafts, pul- 
leyes for mils, and such like devices, than 
elme or wich hasell ; for, in time, it waxeth 
so hard, that the toughnes and hardnes of it 
may be rather compared unto horn than unto 
wood ; and therefore it was called hornebeam, 
or hard-beam. The leaves of it are like the 
