Ut viror est ulmo lætus, ramique comantes,
Arduus, alta petens & levi cortice truncus.
Ulmum adhibe ordinibus, quoties sudenda per hortum,
Sunt serie spatia ingenti, texendaque totis
Æstivos contra soles umbracula campis:
Una alias inter texendis aptior ulmus
Marginibus spatiorum, exornandoque vireto.
Seque adeo series, plano super æquore, tendat
Ulmorum tractu longo; quantum ipsa tuentum
Lumina, vel gressus valeant lustrare sequentum.
Rapinus.
.........fœcundæ frondibus ulmi.
Georg. 2.
CHAPTER V.
Of the Beech.
I. The beech, [fagus] (of two or three kinds) and numbred amongst the glandiferous trees, I rank here before the martial ash, because it commonly grows to a greater stature. But here I may not omit a note of the accurate critic Palmerius, upon a passage in Theophrastus,[75:1] where he animadverts upon his interpreter, and shews that the ancient Φηγὸς was by no means the beech, but a kind of oak; for that the figure of the fruit is so widely unlike it, that being round, this triangular; and both Theophrastus and Pausanias make it indeed a species of oak, (as already we have noted in [cap. III.]) wholly differing in trunk, as well as fruit and leaf; to which he adds (what determines the controversie) ξύλον τῆς φηγοῦ ἰσχυρότατον καὶ ἀσηπέσατον, &c. that it is of a firmer timber, not obnoxious to the worm; neither of which can so confidently be said of the beech. Yet La Cerda too seems guilty of the same mistake: But leaving this, there are of our fagi, two or three kinds with us; the mountain (where it most affects to grow) which is the whitest, and most sought after by the turner; and the campestrial or wild, which is of a blacker colour, and more durable. They are both to be rais’d from the mast, and govern’d like the oak (of which amply) and that is absolutely the best way of furnishing a wood; unless you will make a nursery, and then you are to treat the mast as you are instructed in the chapter of ashes, sowing them in autumn, or later, even after January, or rather nearer the spring, to preserve them from vermin, which are very great devourers of them. But they are likewise to be planted of young seedlings, to be drawn out of the places where the fruitful trees abound. In transplanting them, cut off only the boughs and bruised parts two inches from the stem, to within a yard of the top, but be very sparing of the root: This for such as are of pretty stature. They make spreading trees, and noble shades with their well furnish’d and glistering leaves, being set at forty foot distance, but they grow taller, and more upright in the forests, where I have beheld them at eight and ten foot, shoot into very long poles; but neither so apt for timber, nor fuel: The shade unpropitious to corn and grass, but sweet, and of all the rest, most refreshing to the weary shepherd—lentus in umbra, ecchoing Amaryllis with his oten pipe. Mabillon tells us in his Itinerary, of the old beech at Villambrosa, to be still flourishing, (and greener than any of the rest) under whose umbrage the famous eremit Gualbertus had his cell.
This tree planted in pallisade, affords a useful and pleasant skreen to shelter orange and other tender case-trees from the parching sun, &c. growing very tall, and little inferior to the horn-beam, or Dutch-elm. In the valleys (where they stand warm, and in consort) they will grow to a stupendous procerity, though the soil be stony and very barren: Also upon the declivities, sides, and tops of high hills, and chalky mountains especially, for tho’ they thrust not down such deep and numerous roots as the oak; and grow to vast trees, they will strangely insinuate their roots into the bowels of those seemingly impenetrable places, not much unlike the fir it self, which with this so common tree, the great Cæsar denies to be found in Britanny; Materia cujusque generis, ut in Gallia, præter fagum & abietem: But certainly from a grand mistake, or rather, for that he had not travelled much up into the countrey: Some will have it fagus instead of ficus, but that was never reckon’d among the timber-trees: Virgil reports it will graff with the chesnut.
2. The beech serves for various uses of the housewife;
Hence in the world’s best years the humble shed,
Was happily, and fully furnished:
Beech made their chests, their beds and the joyn’d-stools,
Beech made the board, the platters, and the bowls.[77:1]
With it the turner makes dishes, trays, rimbs for buckets, and other utensils, trenchers, dresser-boards, &c. likewise for the wheeler, joyner, for large screws, and upholster for sellyes, chairs, stools, bedsteads, &c. for the bellows-maker, and husbandman his shovel and spade-graffs; floates for fishers nets instead of corks, is made of its bark; for fuel, billet, bavin and coal, tho’ one of the least lasting: Not to omit even the very shavings for the fining of wines. Peter Crescentius writes, that the ashes of beech, with proper mixture, is excellent to make glass with. If the timber lie altogether under water, ’tis little inferior to elm, as I find it practised and asserted by shipwrights: Of old they made their vasa vindemiatoria and corbes messoriæ (as we our pots for strawberries) with the rind of this beech, nay, and vessels to preserve wine in, and that curiously wrought cup which the shepherd in the Bucolicks wagers withal, was engraven by Alcimedon upon the bark of this tree: And an happy age it seems:
...........No wars did men molest,
When only beechen-bowls were in request.[78:1]