hen you are to treat the mast as you are
instructed in the chapter of ashes, sowing them in autumn, or later,
even after January, or rather nearer the spring, to preserve them from
vermin, which are very great devourers of them. But they are likewise to
be planted of young seedlings, to be drawn out of the places where the
fruitful trees abound. In transplanting them, cut off only the boughs
and bruised parts two inches from the stem, to within a yard of the top,
but be very sparing of the root: This for such as are of pretty stature.
They make spreading trees, and noble shades with their well furnish'd
and glistering leaves, being set at forty foot distance, but they grow
taller, and more upright in the forests, where I have beheld them at
eight and ten foot, shoot into very long poles; but neither so apt for
timber, nor fuel: The shade unpropitious to corn and grass, but sweet,
and of all the rest, most refreshing to the weary shepherd--_lentus in
umbra_, ecchoing Amaryllis with his oten pipe. Mabillon tells us in his
Itinerary, of the old beech at Villambrosa, to be still flourishing,
(and greener than any of the rest) under whose umbrage the famous eremit
Gualbertus had his cell.

This tree planted in pallisade, affords a useful and pleasant skreen to
shelter orange and other tender case-trees from the parching sun, &c.
growing very tall, and little inferior to the horn-beam, or Dutch-elm.
In the valleys (where they stand warm, and in consort) they will grow to
a stupendous procerity, though the soil be stony and very barren: Also
upon the declivities, sides, and tops of high hills, and chalky
mountains especially, for tho' they thrust not down such deep and
numerous roots as the oak; and grow to vast trees, they will strangely
insinuate their roots into the bowels of those seemingly impenetrable
places, not much unlike the fir it self, which with this so common tree,
the great Caesar denies to be found in Britanny; _Materia cujusque
generis, ut in Gallia, praeter fagum & abietem_: But certainly from a
grand mistake, or rather, for that he had not travelled much up into the
countrey: Some will have it _fagus_ instead of _ficus_, but that was
never reckon'd among the timber-trees: Virgil reports it will graff with
the chesnut.

2. The beech serves for various uses of the housewife;

Hence in the world's best years the humble shed,
Was happily, and fully furnished:
Beech made their chests, their beds an