32 
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND TREES. 
or good clay, it reaches a height of seventy feet, with a girth of 
ten feet. If two measurements of the bole’s diameter be taken 
at right angles to each other, they will be found to differ greatly. 
A section of the trunk will not show a circular outline, but rather 
an ellipse, the bole appearing to have been flattened on two sides. 
It is coated with a smooth grey bark, usually spotted with white. 
The leaves are less symmetrical than those of Beech, and are 
broader towards the base. They are of rougher texture, hairy 
on the underside, and their edges are doubly toothed. In 
autumn they turn yellow, then to ruddy gold, but a few days later 
they have settled into the rusty hue they retain throughout 
the winter, in those cases where they remain on the tree until 
spring. 
The wood is exceedingly tough, and not to be worked up with 
ease, but it is considered to make admirable fuel. Evelyn says, 
“ It burns like a candle.” There are those who say that the name 
Hornbeam has reference to the tough or hornlike character of 
its beams ; others declare that in the days when bullocks were 
yoked to the plough the yoke was made of this wood, as being 
fitted by its toughness to stand the strain, and as it was attached 
to the horns, it became the horn-beam. A third theory is that 
the name was derived from Ornus, the Manna-ash, with which 
early botanists confused it, but with all respect to the authority of 
Dr. Prior, who favours it, we prefer to stand on the first sug- 
gestion, with old John Gerarde, who says (“Herball,” 1633): “ In 
time it waxeth so hard that the toughnesse and hardnesse of it 
may be rather compared to horn than unto wood, and therefore 
it was called Hornbeam or hardbeam.” The carpenter is not 
pleased who has hornbeam to work up, for his tools lose their 
edge far too quickly for his labour to be profitable. Evelyn tells 
us that it was called by some the Horse-beech, from the re- 
semblance of the leaves. 
The two kinds of catkins are similar and cylindrical, but 
whilst the male is pendulous from the beginning, the female is 
