The Beech is a tree of no ordinary interest; first, as being more free from impurities than any tree with which we are acquainted. The bark is very clean and smooth, of a light lead color, sprinkled with fine dots of black, so that it has a grayish appearance. It attains the height of sixty to eighty feet. The lower branches are thrown out in a horizontal attitude, while the upper ones assume somewhat of an erect position. The leaves are of graceful proportions, and profuse, forming a dense shade. Some seasons this tree produces an abundance of nuts, which grow in round, prickly burrs, very similar to chestnuts. The nuts are triangular in shape, and supply the pigeon, partridge, squirrels, bears, and other animals with food. The squirrel will hoard up in his little burrow many quarts of these nuts, where he eats them at his leisure during the seasons of winter and spring. It is quite amusing to see the little fellows repeat their visits to their underground habitations, or leap from branch to branch, with their cheeks stuffed nearly to bursting with the precious Beech-nut. The Beech does not dispense its fruit until after severe frosts occur, when the burr either opens or drops from the limb where it grew; in the former case, after a smart frost at night, the early morning breeze shakes them from their elevated position, when they come rattling down upon the dry leaves like showers of hail. Impelled by hunger, bears often climb and gather the nut before it is ripe. I have frequently seen, during my backwoods excursions, the topmost limbs broken off and pulled in toward the trunk of the tree, some of them three inches in diameter, until the whole of the top branches were furled in, forming a tufted circle fifty feet in air. Burned and cracked, the Beech-nut makes a very good substitute for coffee. "The leaves were formerly used in Britain, and are to this day in some parts of Europe, for filling beds." Evelyn says that "its very leaves, which form a natural and most agreeable canopy all the summer, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, afford the best and the easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw; because, besides their tenderness and loose lying together, they continue sweet for seven or eight years long; before which time straw becomes musty and hard. They are used by divers persons of quality in Dauphine, and in Switzerland I have sometimes lain on them to my very great refreshment. So as of this tree it may properly be said, "'The woods a house, the leaves a bed.'"