CHAPTER III.
Beech-trees.--Purity, Size, Fruit.--Efforts of Bears after the Nut.--The Uses to which its Leaves are appropriated.--Mr. Lauder's Testimony, &c.--Use of Wood.--Singular Exemption.--The novel Appearance of the Leaves of a Species in Germany.--Chestnut-tree. --Remarkable one on Mount Ætna.--Balm of Gilead.--Willow.--Ash. --Basswood, or Tiel-tree.--The Poplar.--The Hemlock.--Beauties of its Foliage.--Uses.--Hickory.--The Fir-tree.--Spruce-tree.-- Its conical Form.--Uses.--American Larch.--Success of the Dukes of Athol in planting it on the Highlands of Scotland.
The Beech is a tree of no ordinary interest; first, as being more free from impurities than any tree with which we are acquainted. The bark is very clean and smooth, of a light lead color, sprinkled with fine dots of black, so that it has a grayish appearance. It attains the height of sixty to eighty feet. The lower branches are thrown out in a horizontal attitude, while the upper ones assume somewhat of an erect position. The leaves are of graceful proportions, and profuse, forming a dense shade. Some seasons this tree produces an abundance of nuts, which grow in round, prickly burrs, very similar to chestnuts. The nuts are triangular in shape, and supply the pigeon, partridge, squirrels, bears, and other animals with food. The squirrel will hoard up in his little burrow many quarts of these nuts, where he eats them at his leisure during the seasons of winter and spring. It is quite amusing to see the little fellows repeat their visits to their underground habitations, or leap from branch to branch, with their cheeks stuffed nearly to bursting with the precious Beech-nut. The Beech does not dispense its fruit until after severe frosts occur, when the burr either opens or drops from the limb where it grew; in the former case, after a smart frost at night, the early morning breeze shakes them from their elevated position, when they come rattling down upon the dry leaves like showers of hail. Impelled by hunger, bears often climb and gather the nut before it is ripe. I have frequently seen, during my backwoods excursions, the topmost limbs broken off and pulled in toward the trunk of the tree, some of them three inches in diameter, until the whole of the top branches were furled in, forming a tufted circle fifty feet in air.
Burned and cracked, the Beech-nut makes a very good substitute for coffee. "The leaves were formerly used in Britain, and are to this day in some parts of Europe, for filling beds." Evelyn says that "its very leaves, which form a natural and most agreeable canopy all the summer, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, afford the best and the easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw; because, besides their tenderness and loose lying together, they continue sweet for seven or eight years long; before which time straw becomes musty and hard. They are used by divers persons of quality in Dauphine, and in Switzerland I have sometimes lain on them to my very great refreshment. So as of this tree it may properly be said,
"'The woods a house, the leaves a bed.'"
"We can," says Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, "from our own experience, bear testimony to the truth of what Evelyn says here as to the excellence of Beech leaves for mattresses. We used always to think that the most luxurious and refreshing bed was that which prevails universally in Italy, and which consists of an absolute pile of mattresses filled with the elastic spathe of the Indian corn--which beds have the advantage of being soft as well as elastic--and we have always found the sleep enjoyed on them to be peculiarly sound and restorative. But the beds made of Beech leaves are really not a whit behind them in these qualities, while the fragrant smell of green tea which the leaves retain is most gratifying."
"The wood of the Beech is preferred to all other wood for plane stocks, saw handles, and cylinders used in polishing glass.
"Botanists are unable to find more than one kind of Beech, believing that the distinctions of '_white_' and '_red_' Beech in common use among the people describes but one species.
"The Beech is said never to be struck by lightning. In traveling through a forest country, many trees of a different species, such as the Oak, and, more commonly than any tree within my observation, the Hemlock, may be seen riven by lightning, but never the Beech.
"A most remarkable species of the Beech is said to have been discovered by accident in Germany. In early spring, when the leaves of the purple Beech are agitated by the wind, during bright sunshine, their clear red gives the tree the appearance of being on fire: an effect, Bosc observes, so truly magical, that it is scarcely credible by those who have not seen it."--_Loudon._
THE CHESTNUT-TREE.
This tree is distinguished by the rapidity of its growth and the excellence of its wood for posts and rails--the latter lasting half a century--the good quality of the nut it bears, and the age and size to which it attains.
"Some of the most remarkable trees of Europe are Chestnut-trees. On Mount Ætna is the famous _Castagno di cento cavalli_, so called from its having sheltered a hundred mounted cavaliers. Brydon found this, in 1770, two hundred and four feet in circumference, and it had the appearance of five distinct trees. A century before, when seen by Kircher, they were united, so that probably it had been one tree. The Forworth Chestnut, in England, was fifty-two feet in girth in 1820, when measured by Strutt. Near Sanserre, in France, is a tree of more than ten feet in diameter at six feet from the ground. It is supposed to be a thousand years old."
The largest measurements given of the Chestnut in this country are of one in Bolton, with an erect, undivided trunk forty or fifty feet; three feet from the ground it measured seventeen feet in circumference.
"Southeast of Monument Mountain, near the road leading to Sheffield, in a pasture, an old Chestnut measured, in September, 1844, 'at the ground, thirty feet two inches in circumference; at four feet, twenty-one feet in circumference: the branches extended sixty feet.'"
The Balm of Gilead, the Willow, of which there are twenty-one species, the Ash and Basswood, the Poplar and Hemlock, all afford specimens of great magnitude, as well as possess properties of much value; to which list we may add the Hickory, chiefly for the great variety of valuable purposes to which the wood is appropriated. "Few trees contribute so much to the beauty of woods in autumn; the colors of all at that season are rich, and each species has its own. The fruit of some of the species in its wild state vies with the best of foreign nuts."
THE FIR-TREE.
"In its native forests the Fir-tree varies from two to ten feet in diameter, and from one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet in height. A stump is mentioned as still found on the Columbia River, which measures forty-eight feet in circumference at three feet from the ground, exclusive of its very thick bark."
THE SPRUCE-TREE.
This tree presents a tapering trunk, with a top of mathematical exactness, a regular cone. They attain to the height of seventy or one hundred feet, measuring at the base--the largest I have ever seen--about eight feet in circumference. Lightness, strength, and elasticity are the distinguishing qualities of this wood; and, owing to this, it is extensively used in ship-building, and the frame-work of houses.
The Hemlock is a large tree, often measuring fifteen feet in circumference at the base; the column rises to an elevation of from seventy to one hundred feet; it holds its size remarkably until it reaches the principal limbs, two thirds its height, when it tapers rapidly to the extremity. Its foliage is beautiful for its softness, and forms the principal ingredient in the bed of lumbermen. The use of the boughs for brooms is known to the good country people throughout New England. By persons of classical taste, it is considered the most beautiful of the evergreens.
The author of Massachusetts Reports on Trees, &c., to whom I am much indebted for many of the preceding observations, remarks of the young Hemlock, "that in the beginning of summer each twig is terminated with a tuft of yellowish-green, recent leaves, surmounting the darker green of the former year; the effect, as an object of beauty, is equaled by very few flowering shrubs, and far surpasses that produced by any other tree." The bark is valuable in tanning leather, and makes excellent fuel. This tree grows in immense quantities in the northeast part of Maine, often occupying acres of ground, to the exclusion of nearly all other trees. Its wood is more valued for boards than formerly; its close grain and hardness fit it peculiarly for flooring. "It is much used in the large Atlantic cities as a substitute for stone in the pavement of streets, for which purpose it is sawn into hexagonal (six-sided) blocks of eight inches in thickness, and eight, ten, or eighteen inches in breadth."
"The American _Larch_, known very generally in New England by the aboriginal name of Hackmatack, is sometimes known to attain an elevation of seventy feet, but does not usually exceed forty or fifty feet." It has crowded tufts of leaves, not unlike those of the Spruce or Pine, much shorter than those of the latter, and more slender and graceful than those of the former, and of lighter green, so disposed on the ends of the branches as to make the foliage of the tree the lightest of all the forest trees, especially when compared with the great strength of the tree itself. "Late in autumn they turn to a soft, leather-yellow color, and in the first days of November fall." "It has a straight, erect, rapidly-tapering trunk, clothed with a bluish-gray bark, rather rough, with small roundish scales." The branches are numerous, and most firmly attached to the stem, shooting out at apparently measured distances from each other, generally in a horizontal position, which makes its ascent quite as convenient as a ladder; and, as it grows mostly on open or meadow land, it is often climbed by timber-hunters, affording a good prospect of the forest on the opposite side of the meadow or intervales.
The wood of the Hackmatack is distinguished by the following qualities: "Close-grained, compact, of reddish color, remarkable for its great weight, strength, and durability," the latter even being greater than the Oak. "On these accounts it is preferred before all other woods for knees, beams, and top timbers in ship-building."
The Larch is extensively cultivated in Europe, particularly in Scotland. Though in America it is most generally found in low meadow land, where is depth of soil and plenty of moisture, it has nevertheless "the property of flourishing on surfaces almost without soil, thickly strewn with fragments of rocks, on the high, bleak sides and tops of hills, where vegetation scarcely exists."
The following account of the experiments made by the Dukes of Athol, on the Highlands of Scotland, is so encouraging and deeply interesting, that, although long, I insert it, hoping the example may be followed in appropriate positions in this country:
"The estates of the Dukes of Athol are in the north of Scotland, in the latitude of nearly 50° north. Between 1740 and 1750, James, duke of Athol, planted more than twelve hundred Larch-trees in various situations and elevations, for the purpose of trying a species of tree then new in Scotland. In 1759 he planted seven hundred Larches over a space of twenty-nine Scotch acres, intermixed with other kinds of forest trees, with the view of trying the value of the Larch as a timber tree. This plantation extended up the face of a hill from two hundred to four hundred feet above the level of the sea. The rocky ground of which it was composed was covered with loose and crumbling masses of mica slate, and was not worth above £3 a year altogether. Before he died, in 1764, he was satisfied of the superiority of the Larch as a timber over other firs, even in trees only eighteen or nineteen years old. His successor, John, duke of Athol, first conceived the idea of planting Larch by itself as a forest tree, and of planting the sides of the hills about Dunkeld. He planted three acres with Larches alone, at an elevation of five or six hundred feet above the level of the sea, on a soil not worth a shilling an acre. He also planted over four hundred acres on the sides of hills before his death, in 1774. His son, Duke John, continuing the execution of his father's plans, had planted in 1783 279,000 trees. Observing the rapid growth and hardy nature of the Larch, he determined to cover with it the steep acclivities of mountains of greater altitude than any that had yet been tried. He therefore inclosed a space of twenty-nine acres on the rigid summit of Craig-y-barns, and planted a strip entirely with Larches among the crevices and hollows of the rocks, where the least soil could be found. At this elevation none of the larger kinds of natural plants grew, so that the grounds required no previous preparation of clearing. This plantation was formed in 1785 and 1786. Between that year and 1791 he planted six hundred and eighty acres with 500,000 Larches, the greater part only sprinkled over the surface, on account of the difficulty of procuring a sufficient number of plants. Besides a plantation of seventy acres for the purpose of embellishment, he had, in 1799, extended his plantations of Larches over an additional space of eight hundred acres, six hundred of which were planted entirely, though thinly, with Larch. These took 800,000 plants.
"Observing, with satisfaction and admiration, the luxuriant growth of the Larch in all situations, and its hardihood even in the most exposed regions, the duke resolved on pushing entire Larch plantations still further to the summit of the highest hills.
"He therefore determined to cover with Larch sixteen hundred Scotch acres, situated from nine hundred to twelve hundred feet above the level of the sea. Its soil, presenting the most barren aspect, was strewed over thickly with fragments of rock, and vegetation of any kind scarcely existed upon it. 'To endeavor to grow ship-timber," writes the duke, "among rocks and shivered fragments of schist, such as I have described, would have appeared to a stranger extreme folly, and money thrown away; but, in the year 1800, I had for more than twenty-five years so watched and admired the hardihood and the strong vegetative powers of the Larch, in many situations as barren and as rugged as any part of this range, though not so elevated, as quite satisfied me that I ought, having so fair an opportunity, to seize it.'
"Having now no doubt whatever of the successful growth of the Larch in very elevated situations, the duke still further pursued his object of covering _all_ his mountainous regions with that valuable wood. Accordingly, a space to the northward of the one last described, containing two thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine Scotch acres, was immediately inclosed, and planted entirely with Larch.
"This tract, lying generally above the region of broom, furze, juniper, and long heath, required no artificial clearing. An improved mode of planting was employed here, that of using young plants only, two or three years' seedlings, put into the ground by means of an instrument invented by the duke instead of the common spade.
"In 1824, the growth of the Larch in this last tract, called _Loch Ordie Forest_, having greatly exceeded the sanguine hopes and expectations of the duke, he determined on adding to it an extensive adjoining tract, consisting of two thousand two hundred and thirty-one Scotch acres, denominated Loch Hoishnie. The preparations of fencing, clearing (where that was necessary), making roads, and procuring plants from different nurserymen, occupied the time till October, 1825, when the planting commenced, and was carried on in such good earnest that the whole was finished by December, 1826.
"The planting of this forest appears to have terminated the labors of the duke in planting. He and his predecessors had planted more than fourteen millions of Larch plants, occupying over ten thousand English acres. It has been estimated that the whole forest on mountain ground, planted entirely with Larch, about six thousand five hundred Scotch acres, will, in seventy-two years from the time of planting, be a forest of timber fit for building the largest ships. Before being cut down for this purpose, it will have been thinned to about four hundred trees to an acre. Supposing each tree to yield fifty cubic feet of timber, its value, at a shilling a foot (one half the present value), will give £1,000 an acre, or, in all, a sum of £6,500,000 sterling."[4]
[4] Reports on Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts.
THE PINE-TREE, OR FOREST LIFE.