480 
among the cabinet-makers for chairs, both plain and painted, for bedsteads, with the posts fre¬ 
quently stained the colour of mahogany. It is used in the country for rafters in building. Much 
of it is cut out into quarters and planks for various purposes; and barn-floors are frequently laid 
with it. The mill-wright uses it for cogs, &c. and the wheel-wright for spokes and fellies. It goes 
to the dock-yards for wedges, and may be used in ship's bottoms from the keel to the floor-heads; 
and to the coal-mines under the name of Newcastle railing. Being of an even grain, and without 
knots, it makes beautiful benches and railing for public rooms, and many sorts of inside work in 
houses. It is formed into gun-stocks, tool-handles, mallets, carpenters planes, &c. heel-pieces, and 
pegs for heels, and is used for the sounding boards of harpsichords, &c. by the musical-instrument 
makers. It is cut into pipe-staves for dry goods, especially by the soap-cask coopers, for whose 
use a considerable quantity is imported in ballast from Bremen and Dantzick, in slabs and clap¬ 
boards about five feet in length. It is said that these coopers consume from twenty to thirty 
thousand of these clapboards yearly, except in time of war, when the importation is stopped. It 
is excellent fuel, and in burning affords a large quantity of pot-ash. Much of it is sent to the 
Metropolis under the name of London billet, for the use of the bakers, glasshouses, &c. The stack- 
wood, which is made up of the branches, is burnt chiefly into charcoal. The nuts, or mast, as they 
are commonly called, fatten swine, but the fat is not firm; and they are greedily devoured by mice, 
squirrels and birds; they are said to occasion giddiness and head-ach; but when dried and pow¬ 
dered to make wholesome bread: roasted, they are sometimes substituted for coffee: the poor 
people in Silesia use the expressed oil instead of butter. At the beginning of this century Aaron 
Hill had a project for paying off the national debt with the oil of Beech-nuts! But they seem to 
yield little oil in northern countries; in Sweden, Linnseus informs us, scarcely any can be expressed 
from them. 
If the soil be tolerably good, Beech will become fit to be felled in twenty-five years. The 
woods are then drawn, as it is called; that is, the trees fit for fire-wood or billet, poles, timber, &c. 
are taken down, and no crooked trees are suffered to remain. Formerly it was the custom to leave 
old stools to produce new trees, but as these seldom grow well and handsome, now during the 
winter the old stools are grubbed up, and the plants which spring spontaneously from the mast are 
encouraged to supply the places of the trees which are taken down. Once in six or seven years 
this operation of drawing the woods may be repeated; and thus there is a constant and regular 
succession of trees fit to cut. The price which fire-wood or billet fetches in Buckinghamshire is 
near four-pence the foot solid measure. The poles and better stuff for gun-stocks, wedges, &c. sell 
for five-pence the foot. The largest trees for mill-wrights, &c* sell for six-pence or seven-pence the 
foot. Stackwood is fifteen or sixteen shillings the load : and faggots fifteen or sixteen shillings the 
hundred. 
Whatever may have been the case with respect to our island in Caesar's time, the Beech is now 
no uncommon tree in many considerable tracts of it, particularly on that great ridge of chalk hills 
which runs from Dorsetshire, through Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surry, Sussex, and Kent, branching 
out into Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Hertfordshire. On the declivities of Cotswold and 
Stroudwater hills of Gloucestershire, and on the bleak banks of the Wye, in the counties of Here¬ 
ford and Monmouth. It is indeed to be found in almost every county of England. 
Some plantations of it have been lately made by the Earl of Fife, in the county of Murray, 
where his Lordship has planted near two hundred thousand of these trees. George Boss, Esq. has 
also set 13,000 of them in Cromarty. In England, John Sneyd, Esq. has planted above 14,000 
at Belmont in Staffordshire, between the years 1784 and 1786. And the Bishop of Llandaff 2000 
at Ambleside in the year 1788. 
