From the time of Virgil the praises of the beech have been sung in both poetry and prose. Passienus Crispus, the orator, who married the Empress Agrippina, was so fond of it that “he not only delighted to repose beneath its shade, but he frequently poured wine on its roots, and used often to embrace it.” Evelyn and Cook recommended it, Boutcher thought that it “hardly had an equal,” Mathews called it “the Hercules and Adonis” of the sylva of Great Britain, and among the English poets Beaumont and Fletcher, Leigh Hunt, Gray, Campbell, and Wordsworth all loved and admired it for its rare beauty and vigor. Gilpin, however, does not join this chorus of praise; in his “Remarks on Forest Scenery” he calls it “an overgrown bush,” and explains at some length his reasons for thinking that it lacks picturesque beauty. In Europe the wood has been used for more purposes than in America, and it also ranks high as fuel. In France oil is made from beechnuts, used in lamps and for cooking. The specific name, _sylvatica_, is from the Latin which means belonging to the woods. [Illustration: TRUNK OF A YOUNG BEECH Page 80 ] The purple beech is a variety of this tree, which has been propagated from the original sport found in a German forest over a hundred years ago. Plants from the seeds of the purple beech have a tendency to revert to the original green, and to insure its peculiar colored foliage gardeners perpetuate it by layers. It is a highly artificial tree, and unless it is carefully placed in appropriate surroundings its effect is far from pleasing. [Sidenote: Chestnut _Castanea dentata_] _One of the largest of our forest trees. The bark is dark hard, and rugged, with coarse ridges on old trees. Light brown buds. Alternate leaf-scars. Recent shoots are coarse and channelled with two grooves running down from the base of each leaf-scar, closely set with white or gray dots. Fruit ripe in October._ At all times a giant among trees, the chestnut seems perhaps most remarkable in winter when the massive trunk and lofty branches can be fully appreciated. There is much beauty in the bark of this tree, the fissures sweep boldly up and down the trunk with broad, smooth spaces between the furrows and give a most pleasing impression. It is interesting to find that the chestnut is one of the exceptions in nature to the rule that every tree has an unvarying mathematical arrangement of leaves on the stem. This regular distribution of leaves on the stem to economize space and light is called phyllotaxy, and different trees follow various systematic arrangements. When the leaves or leaf-scars are alternate on the stem, as they are in those of the chestnut, the arrangement is spiral and one leaf follows another up the stem in ranks of two, three, five, or more in definite order according to the kind of tree. In the chestnut, however, the phyllotaxy is frequently variable in different twigs of the same tree, and it follows an unruly, wayward leaf arrangement.