In California an almond-leaf blight has already appeared and seriously affected the trees in some of the orchards. It is caused by a fungus known as _Cercospora circumscissa_ Sacc. This fungus attacks the leaves and young twigs, causing the former to fall off early in the season, thereby checking the growth of the tree and preventing the maturing of the fruit. It is thought that remedies may be applied to check this disease, and there will probably be some form of copper solution employed for destroying it, as with various species of fungi on other kinds of fruit trees. CHAPTER III. THE BEECHNUT. Fagus, _Linn._ The Beech. The Latin name of the genus (_Fagus_) supposed to be an equivalent of the Greek phegos, an oak, or it may be derived from _phago_, to eat; the nuts of this tree having been used as food by man in all ages and countries where it is a native. The modern English name, beech, was probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon _bece_ or _boc_; in Dutch it is _beuk_; French, _hetre_; Icelandic, _beyk_; Danish, _bog_; Swedish, _bok_; German, _buche_ or _buoche_; Russian, _buk_; Italian, _faggio_; Armenian, _fao_; and in Welsh _ffawydd_. The beech belongs to the order _Cupuliferæ_, or oak family. The genus contains about fifteen species of handsome deciduous and evergreen trees, or shrubs, very widely distributed throughout the temperate and colder regions of both the northern and southern hemispheres. Male flowers are bell-shaped, in long-stalked drooping heads; calyx five to seven cleft, containing numerous stamens. Female flowers two to four in a cluster on the summit of the scaly-bracted peduncle; the inside scales uniting, forming a four-lobed involucre of imbricated bracts, the whole becoming at maturity a somewhat prickly, scaly bur, within which are found a pair of sharp-edged triangular nuts, containing a tender and sweet-flavored kernel.