The common beech has sported into many varieties. Those most commonly planted are the purple and copper beeches, which are far from being the same, as many people seem to think they are. A well-grown purple beech, such as that near the south-west corner of Osterley House, Isleworth (to name one out of very many fine specimens which exist in the United Kingdom), is a truly magnificent object, the rich, but subdued, depth of colour showing in charming contrast with other foliage, yet so soft as never to jar with it. This variety is said to have originated in a forest in the canton of Zurich, where, according to the legend, five brothers fought, three of whom fell, and from the soil where each lay grew a purple-leaved beech. As for the copper beech, had I the chance of stopping the supply, I should not hesitate to do so, for the foliage, as I think, has a disagreeable metallic hue that consorts well with nothing else. Before purchasing young purple beeches, it is prudent to visit the nursery when they are in leaf, or you may be served with copper beeches, and not discover the mistake till it is too late. The mast or seed of both purple and copper beeches yield a large proportion of seedlings in the parental livery; but no beech, green or purple, bears mast till it is at least forty years old. The fern-leafed beech is no improvement on the type, and grows with the ungraceful pose of a grafted plant; but the weeping beech, which also has to be propagated by grafts, sometimes develops into an object of great beauty. Of three or four exotic species of beech in the Northern Hemisphere there is but one, the American beech (_F. ferruginea_), which would be a gain to ornamental planting in the British Isles. Our own beech has a pretty bark, but that of the American species outshines it as silver does pewter. Unluckily, like many other growths of the Eastern States, it fails utterly to accommodate itself to the British climate. Visitors to Boston, Massachusetts, should not fail to see the group of beeches in the Arnold Arboretum at Brookline. [Illustration: THE CHAIRMAKER, BUCKINGHAM BEECH WOODS]