326 
DECIDUOUS TREES. 
The leaves expand later than the maples and horse-chestnuts, 
and earlier than those of the oak or hickory. They are small, 
oval-accuminate, serrated, thin, wavy, dark, and glossy, and so 
thickly set on the branches, that its shade is the darkest of all the 
forest trees. They have the same fault, however, as those of the 
white oak, of remaining on the tree, dead and dry, during the 
winter and spring. This quality, though it makes the beech less 
desirable as a lawn tree, when it mars the tender verdure of spring 
grass by dropping its second crop of dead leaves, is, nevertheless, 
rather an interesting feature in winter,—the gathering of snow 
upon the dead foliage often producing most picturesque effects. 
We agree with Downing “ that a deciduous tree should as certainly 
drop its leaves at the approach of cold weather, as an evergreen 
should retain them,” and offer this mitigating beauty as a partial 
apology for the one bad habit of the family. 
The roots of the beech grow close under the surface of the 
ground, and in old forests the radiation of their huge gnarled 
masses around the base of the trunk, is most picturesque. The 
poet Gray thus happily describes them :— 
“ There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 
His listless length at noontide he would stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbled by.” 
In the famous old beech forest of the Hague in Belgium, this 
curious ramification of the great roots is one of the most interest¬ 
ing features of the place; and in the wonderfully picturesque old 
forest of Fontainebleau, the grand old beech trees that wreathe their 
roots among the rocks which they seem to love, add greatly to the 
air of weird antiquity that pervades this ancient hunting-ground of 
the French kings. 
The wild species of the beech are not numerous; but the varie¬ 
ties of the European beech, Fagus sylvaticus, introduced by culti¬ 
vators and tree-fanciers are some of the most peculiar of trees. 
The American White Beech. Fagus americana. —This, the 
loftiest and most common native species, together with its com¬ 
panion the red beech, F ferruginea , which forms a lower and more 
