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Page 38
In Scotland the beech-chips and branches are burned to smoke herrings,
and pyroligneous acid (a form of which is probably known to any of our
young readers who suffer from toothache as _creosote_!) is distilled
from them. Mr. Loudon tells us that the word "book" comes from the
German word _buch_, which, in the first instance, means a beech, and was
applied to books because the old German bookbinders used beech-wood
instead of paste-board for the sides of thick volumes. Beech-wood is
especially good for fuel. Only the sycamore, the Scotch pine, and the
ash give out more heat and light when they burn. Beech-nuts--or
beech-mast, as it is called--are eaten by many animals. Pigs, deer,
poultry, &c., are turned into beech-woods to fatten on the mast.
Squirrels and dormice delight in it. In France it is used to make
beech-oil. This oil is used both for cooking and burning, and for the
latter purpose has the valuable property of having no nasty smell.
Of the beauty of the beech as a forest-tree--let artists rave! Its
smooth and shapely bole does not tempt the sketcher's eye alone. To the
lover and the school-boy (and, alas! to that inartistic animal the
British holiday-maker) it offers an irresistible surface for cutting
names and dates. Upon its branches and beneath its shadow grow many
_fungi_, several of which are eatable. Truffles are found there; those
underground dainties which dogs (and sometimes pigs!) are trained to
grub up for our benefit. They discover the whereabouts of the truffle by
scent, for there is no sign of it above ground. Nothing else will grow
under beech-trees, except holly.
Scarcely less charming than the beech-forests are beech-hedges. They cut
and thrive with cutting like yew-hedges.
"Little woods" of beech are common in Buckinghamshire. They are chiefly
grown for the charcoal, which is valuable for gunpowder.
"Copper-Beeches"--red-leaved beech-trees, very beautiful for ornamental
purposes--all come from one red-leaved beech, a sort of freak of nature,
which was found about a century ago in a wood in Germany.
The Birch (_Betula alba_, &c.) is also a tree of very distinctive
appearance. The silver-white bark, which peels so delightfully under
childish fingers, is not less charming to the sketcher's eye, whether as
a near study or as gleaming points of high light against the grey
greens and misty purples of a Highland hillside. It is emphatically the
tree of the Highlands of the North. It bends and breaks not under the
wildest winds, it thrives on poor soil, and defies mist and cold. So
varied are its uses that it has been said that the Scotch Highlander
makes everything of birch, from houses to candles, and beds to ropes!
The North American Indians and the Laplanders apply it almost as
universally as the Chinese use paper. The wigwams or huts of the North
American Indians are made of birch-bark laid over a framework of
birch-poles or trunks, and their canoes or boats are cased in it. The
Laplander makes his great-coat of it,--a circular _poncho_ with a hole
for his head,--as well as his houses and his boots and shoes. It will be
easily believed that birch-bark was used in ancient times for writing on
before the invention of paper.
Birch-wood makes good fuel. It is also used by cabinet-makers. Its uses
in "little woods" are many. The charcoal is good for gunpowder, and it
is that of which _crayons_ are made. Birch-coppices are cut for brooms,
hoops, &c., at five to six years old, and at ten to twelve for
faggot-wood, poles, fencing, and bark for the tanners. Birch-spray (that
is, the twigs and leaves) is used for smoking hams and herrings, and for
brooms to sweep grass. It is also used to make birch-rods; but as we
think very ill of the discipline of any household in which the children
and the pets cannot be kept in order without being beaten, we hope our
own young readers are only familiar with birch-rods in picture-books.
The (Sweet or Spanish) Chestnut (_Castanca vesca_) is grown in "little
woods" for hop-poles, fence-wood, and hoops. The wood of the full-grown
tree is also valuable.
Evelyn says, "A decoction of the rind of the tree tinctures hair of a
golden colour, esteemed a beauty in some countries." It would be
entertaining to know if this is the foundation of the "auricomous
fluids" advertised by hair-dressers!
Amongst "little woods" the dearest of all to the school-boy must surely
be the hazel-copse! The Hazel (_Corylus avellana_) is never a large
tree. It is, however, long lived, and of luxuriant growth. When cut it
"stoles" or throws up shoots very freely, and when treated so will live
a hundred years. With a single stem, Mr. Loudon assures us, it would
live much longer. Filbert-hazels are a variety with longer nuts. Hazels
are cultivated not only for the nuts, but for corf-rods,[1] hoops,
fencing, &c., and hazel-charcoal, like beech-charcoal, is used for
crayons. Like many other plants, the hazel has two kinds of flowers,
which come out before the leaves. The long pale catkins appear first,
and a little later tiny crimson flowers come where the nuts are
afterwards to be.
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