The plantations of beeches in Oakley Park are well worthy of note in speaking of the Cotteswolds, for although they have been planted here, yet the fine, tall, clean balks, lofty tops, and the “twilight shades” beneath, will not soon be forgotten by the author, who, beneath their boughs, through the liberality of Earl Bathurst, “has felt them all his own,” as says the poet Gray of the Burnham beeches. Here, too, has he mused, though not, like Pope, in “thoughts that burn,” yet much wondering at the curious plants which choose such seclusion for their dwelling. Of these the following may be here enumerated, as they really form part of the natural history of the beech wood:— _Listera Nidus-avis_—Birds’-nest Orchis. _Habenaria chlorantha_—Butterfly Orchis. _Epipactis grandiflora_—Large White Helleborine. _Epipactis ensifolia_—Narrow-leaved White Helleborine. _Epipactis latifolia_—Broad-leaved Helleborine. _Monotropa Hypopithys_—Yellow Birds’-nest. _Pyrola minor_—Lesser Winter Green. Such a list of plants found in the beech woods is sufficient to make their locality remarkable, and if we add to them the _Tuber cibarium_—Truffle, _Morchella esculenta_—Morell, _Elaphomyces muricatus_—Sharp-warted _Elaphomyces_, —these, with various other curious fungi, will be sufficient to make Oakley Park and its beeches a botanical habitat of no mean pretension. As regards the truffle, we may mention that we have heard that a former Earl Bathurst kept dogs for the purpose of hunting them. We have partaken of the morells from this park several times, and always found them delicious, and can recommend them stuffed with sausage-meat and fried, as a dish for an epicure: we have seen them exposed for sale in the greengrocers’ shops of the good old town of Cirencester. But we are sadly digressing from the subject of the beech tree in his history as a forest and ornamental tree. Under the latter aspect, then, most authors, except Gilpin, view the beech to hold a very high place. Coleman, in his “Woodlands,” considers that,— Among our truly indigenous forest-trees, the beech must certainly rank as second only to the oak for majesty and picturesqueness; while, for the union of grace and nobility, it may claim precedence over every other member of our sylva. Having said this, we must, as a matter of course, dissent from the opinion of Gilpin, the highly-gifted author of “Forest Scenery,” who has, as we think, unjustly impugned the ornamental character of this generally favourite tree, and this because he had some crotchets of his own about landscape composition, and the shape that trees ought to take to make them good subjects for the pencil. The beech did not happen to fit itself to his theory, and so he quarrelled with it, and called it hard names.