Part 3

There are seventeen species of beech native of South America and Australasia. These have now been classified as a distinct genus, _Nothofagus_, that is, southern beech. Two of them appear to agree with British soil and climate, namely, the evergreen _N. betuloides_, whereof I have no experience, and the deciduous _N. obliqua_, of which two seedlings, raised from seed brought from Chile by Mr. Elwes in 1902, were sent me from Kew in 1906 to experiment on their hardiness. These have grown vigorously, having endured 20° of frost without wincing, and are now [1914] about 20 feet high; but, owing to their leafing fully a fortnight earlier than our native beech, they are more apt to be seared by late frost. In its native country this species equals our own beech in stature and bulk, its timber being largely used for railway sleepers, building, etc. Moreover, judging from the very few young plants in this country, it is an exceedingly ornamental tree. Of the other southern species, six are large evergreen trees, natives of Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania, not capable of enduring the British climate, except, perhaps, in the mildest districts of the south and west.

There are still, I believe, among the loyal subjects of King George V. persons who profess to be Jacobites, as there are undoubtedly thousands who cherish the memory of Prince Charles Edward as a precious national heritage. For these, the beeches that droop over the swift-running Arkaig at Lochiel's place of Achnacarry must have a mournful significance. In the spring of 1745, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, already advanced in years, was busy, in common with many other Scottish lairds, in developing the resources of his estates by draining, reclaiming, and planting trees. The union of the English and Scottish Legislatures had brought peace and security to the northern kingdom such as it had not known since the death of Alexander III. in 1286, and landowners felt encouraged for the first time to apply themselves to useful enterprise.

Suddenly Prince Charlie landed at Borrodale on 28th July, and summoned Lochiel and the other Highland chiefs to his standard. Lochiel, well knowing the hopelessness of the enterprise, started to obey the summons, thoroughly determined to dissuade the Prince from going forward with it. His brother, John Cameron of Fassifern, begged him not to meet the Prince. "For," said he, "I know you far better than you know yourself, and if the Prince once sets eyes upon you, he will make you do what he pleases." Fassifern was but too just in his forecast. It happened exactly as he had said. Lochiel at first flatly refused to bring out his clan; but in the end yielded to the Prince's persuasion, returned home, marshalled fourteen hundred men, and took part in all the phases of that hare-brained campaign, till he was carried off the field of Culloden severely wounded.

During Lochiel's absence a quantity of young beech trees had arrived at Achnacarry from the south to his order. They were heeled in a long row beside the river, awaiting his instructions. But the chief "came back to Lochaber no more." He lingered a couple of years in exile, his estates forfeited, his person proclaimed, and he died in 1748. The beeches were never removed from the trench where they had been set to await his return. They have grown up in a rank of silvery stems, so closely serried that between some of them a man's body may not pass. Winds of winter wail a coronach among the bare boughs; in summer the leafy branches stoop low upon the hurrying water; at the sunniest noontide there reigns deep gloom under that crowded grove. No more pathetic memorial could be designed for a lost cause and for him whom men spoke of as "the gentle Lochiel."

The Spanish Chestnut

The sweet or Spanish chestnut (_Castanea sativa_, Miller) cannot be reckoned indigenous to the British Isles, nor is there any evidence in support of the common belief that it was introduced during the Roman occupation. It is, however, far from improbable that the Roman colonists sowed some of the fruit which they imported as food, and, finding that the young trees took kindly to our soil and climate, continued to cultivate them.

Chestnuts, now as then, form an important part of the winter diet of country folk in Italy and Spain, being ground into flour, whence excellent cakes and pottage are made. British housewives regard them only as a luxury, and large quantities are imported into this country annually; but chestnuts are as nutritive and wholesome as they are palatable, and there are few more appetising odours than that wafted from the charcoal stove of the itinerant vendor of chestnuts, a familiar figure in London streets so soon as chill October draws to a close. I may confess to having partaken, under cloud of night, of this wayside delicacy; nor do I care how soon the opportunity presents itself of repeating the treat.

Chestnuts ripen well and regularly in the southern English counties, though they are considerably smaller than those imported from the Continent. In Scotland we seldom have enough summer heat to bring them to maturity. The summers of 1911 and 1914, indeed, were long enough and hot enough to ripen them; but even so the nuts were so small that there was more patience than profit in collecting them.

Even though we cannot actually trace the introduction of this noble tree to our Roman conquerors, there is proof in Anglo-Saxon literature that it was known in England before the Norman conquest, for it receives mention by an early writer as the "cisten" or "cyst-beam," "cisten" being but a form of the Latin _castanea_. Chaucer (1340-1400) is the earliest English poet to mention it, the list of trees wherein he includes it being a very interesting one as showing the nature of English woodland in the fourteenth century.

As oke, firre, birche, aspe, elder, elme, poplere, Willow, holm,[6] plane,[7] boxe, chesten, laure, Maple, thorne, beche, awe, hasel, whipultre,[8] How they were felde shall not be tolde by me.

The right English name is, therefore, "chesten"; modern usage has added "nut," which is as irrational as it would be to speak of a "hazel-nut" to indicate a hazel or a "fircone" to indicate a fir.

Shakespeare, of course, was quite familiar both with the tree and its fruit. Thus one of the witches in _Macbeth_:

A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, And mounched and mounched and mounched. "Give me," quoth I. "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.

Moreover, the chestnut had been long enough established in England to have its name borrowed to denote a rich shade of russet. So in _As You Like It_:

_Rosalind._ I' faith, his hair is of a good colour.

_Celia._ An excellent colour; your chestnut was ever the only colour.

The Spanish chestnut is essentially a southern growth, being found wild only in Southern Europe, Algeria, Asia Minor, and Northern Persia. It is remarkable, therefore, that it should thrive so well in the British Isles, even in the northern part thereof; for although, as aforesaid, it is shy of fruiting in Scotland, it grows to enormous proportions in that country.

Probably the tallest chestnut north of the Tweed is one at Yester, in East Lothian, which in 1908 measured 112 feet high by 18 feet 8 inches in girth. Next to it comes a fine tree at Marchmont, in Berwickshire, 102 feet high by 14½ in girth, with a clear bole of 32 feet. Still further north, there is a huge fellow at Castle Leod, in Ross-shire, which, though only 76 feet high, girths no less than 21 feet 4 inches at 5 feet from the ground.

The finest chestnut I have seen anywhere is in the woodland of Thoresby Park, near Nottingham, being within the bounds of the ancient Sherwood Forest. In 1904 it was 110 feet high, with a straight bole quite clear of branches for 70 feet. Its cubic contents in timber were estimated at 300 feet. Loudon measured this tree in 1837 and found it to be 70 feet high, with a girth of only 11 feet at 1 foot from the ground. Its girth at that height is now over 17 feet. It is impossible to imagine a more perfect specimen of the species than this beautiful tree. It was planted about the year 1730, and is, therefore, now, say, 180 years old. Planters may accept a lesson from this tree, which has been drawn up to its fine stature by being grown in close forest among beeches, some of which, of the same height as itself, have been cleared away to show its fine proportions. Without such discipline, it might have expended its vigour in building up an enormously swollen trunk, instead of towering to its present height.

This tendency towards breadth instead of height may be seen in countless places, both in England and Scotland. The Trysting Tree at Bemersyde, the massive pair in Mr. Wallace's garden at Lochryan, and the great chestnut at Myres Castle, in Fife (19 feet 9 inches in girth), are examples in point. At Deepdene, in Surrey, there stands a tree of this character, the clear bole being only 8 feet high, but girthing 26½ feet _at the narrowest part_. Near to it is one of nobler proportions--90 feet high, with a girth of 21 feet 5 inches.

There is one characteristic of the chestnut which, while it adds much to the beauty of the grove, certainly detracts from the value of the timber. Just as one may see in a Gothic cloister how the architect, wearying of straight columns, introduces here and there a twisted one, so the trunk of the chestnut often grows in a regularly spiral manner.

Economically and commercially, the timber of Spanish chestnut, up to a certain age, is no whit inferior to that of the oak--superior, indeed, in its young stages, owing to its producing less sap wood. Chestnut palings, gates, etc., are the most durable that can be made of any British-grown wood. In 1907 Lord Ducie exhibited at the Gloucestershire Agricultural Show some fencing posts made from chestnuts which he planted in 1855 and felled in 1885. These posts remained perfectly sound after exposure to wind and weather for two and twenty years.

Not only in durability, but in other qualities, the timber of chestnut is fully equal to that of oak, which it closely resembles; and, as it grows much faster and to a larger size than the oak, it would soon drive its rival out of the market, but for its greater liability to one grave defect, namely, "ring-shake." This is the name given to a splitting of the wood along one of the concentric annual rings, thereby ruining the log for the sawing of planks. The cause of this internal rupture is obscure, but the injury takes place in chestnuts over seventy years of age more commonly than in any other tree, and, as it cannot be detected until the tree is felled, merchants are very shy of offering for a standing lot.

As a coppice tree, the Spanish chestnut has no equal in this country; the rotation of the crop is far shorter than that of oak, the poles are more durable, and a steady demand has been created for an admirable form of paling made up of split chestnut staves, set closely together upright and bound with wire. This kind of fence, however, ought not to be used in any fox-hunting country, for high-couraged hounds, attempting to climb it, get impaled on the sharp tops and frightfully injured.

"Chestnut," it is well known, is uncomplimentary slang for a worn-out anecdote. They told me in Philadelphia that the phrase had its source in a theatre in Walnut Street, one of the principal thoroughfares of that city. This theatre was built in rivalry of an older one in Chestnut Street: its _répertoire_ lacked originality, and patrons of the other house, when they recognised jokes they had heard and situations they had seen there, used to hail the players with the cry--"A chestnut! a chestnut!" And this explanation may serve as well as another. In this connection I may be permitted to put on record a _bon mot_ by a well-known member of the present Radical Government. We had been dining, a small party, in the House of Commons, shortly after the late Sir M. Grant Duff had published the third volume of his reminiscences, which, it may be remembered, contained many anecdotes not told for the first time. One of the ladies of our party expressed a wish to see Westminster Hall, and, having been conducted thither, asked me what the fine roof was made of. "It is of oak," I replied; "some people used to think it was of chestnuts, but I don't suppose there were enough chestnuts in England to furnish a roof like that in the reign of Richard." "No," observed Mr. ----, "Grant Duff had not published his third volume!"

The Ash

"Oh it's hame and it's hame, at hame I fain would be, Hame, lads, hame in the north countrie; Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny ivy tree, They a' nourish best in the north countrie."

The bard who was responsible for this ancient jingle assigned that precedence to the oak which common sentiment has always accorded to it as the monarch of British woodland. Economically, also, the oak held the first place so long as Britannia ruled the waves from wooden walls, but in this ironclad era our Admiralty has little use for oak timber, and there is now no broad-leaved or "hardwood" tree that can be cultivated so profitably as the ash. Indeed it is hardly doubtful that this is the only species of tree, willows, poplars and certain conifers excepted, which a young man may plant with reasonable expectation of receiving any pecuniary profit during his lifetime. The properties which ensure to the ash (_Fraxinus excelsior_) this superiority to all rivals are its hardihood, the matchless quality of its timber for many purposes, and its market value from a very early age.

First, as to its hardihood. No British tree, not even the oak, is so wary of starting into growth before all risk of late spring frost is past. Tennyson, the very Virgil among British bards for keen observation of nature, has embalmed this characteristic in a beautiful passage in _The Princess_:

Why lingereth she to clothe herself in love? Delaying, as the tender ash delays To clothe herself when all the woods are green.

Once, and once only, do I remember the prudent ash to have been caught, namely, in 1897, when after a month of deceptive warmth, the mercury fell to 10° Fahrenheit on the 22nd May. Twenty-two degrees of frost within a month of the summer solstice! No wonder the young ash foliage, which had been lured into precocious growth, was shrivelled and blackened as by fire. And that, not only in the north, but in Herts and Hants, as I had occasion to note when trout-fishing in these southern counties. Even the beech and hawthorn fared no better, but their leaves were seared brown instead of black.

Then as to wind exposure, what tree can compare with the ash for length and strength of anchorage against the gale? It is astonishing to what distance it sends its tough roots, whether they run through free soil or wind themselves into the crevices of limestone rock. This far-ranging habit renders it the worst of all neighbours to a garden, and no ash tree should be suffered to grow within fifty yards of ground where herbs or fruit are cultivated.

For toughness and strength the timber of ash has no equal, even among foreign woods; and it is always in request at a good price for waggon-building, implement-making, and other purposes. Moreover, British ash, properly grown, is more highly esteemed than ash imported from other countries. Unfortunately, owing to our neglect of systematic and economic forestry, as distinct from arboriculture and the management of game covert, ash is very seldom to be seen grown under proper conditions in the United Kingdom. It should be grown in woods sufficiently close to draw the stems up to such a height as will ensure a good length of clean bole. Standing in the open or in hedgerows, it sends out huge side branches which destroy the quality of the timber.

In consequence of our misuse of this tree, which ought to be the most valuable of all assets to British forestry, good ash timber has become exceedingly scarce; although undoubtedly there are an immense number of excellent stems in most parts of the country, which, if landowners generally understood their own interest and the true welfare of their woodland, would be felled and sold before they reached an unmanageable size.

In one respect the ash possesses a merit superior to any other hardwood tree, except, as aforesaid, willow and poplar, in that it reaches commercial maturity soonest. Grown under forest conditions in good, well-drained soil, it is most fit for the market at from fifty to seventy years of age. But, as it is readily saleable from twenty years old upwards, an ash plantation may be reckoned on bringing in some revenue from thinnings long before the main crop is ripe for the axe. For instance, I was lately offered a very good price for ash poles averaging nine inches in diameter for the manufacture of billiard cues. The regular supply is drawn from Switzerland; but could most easily be furnished from British woodland if the necessary care were bestowed upon the saplings. The trees should not be allowed to stand after attaining eighty years of growth; for the timber, even if it continued sound, hardens after that age, and, losing much of its characteristic elasticity, does not command such a good price.

Homer says that the spear of Achilles had an ashen shaft, and all true Scots should hold the ash in special honour, forasmuch as of yore it furnished staves for their national weapon, the pike. It was from the long ashen pike-shafts of Randolph Moray's handful of Scots that de Clifford's cavalry recoiled on the Eve of St. John, 1314, after thrice attempting to break that bristling fence of steel; it was through the staunchness of his pikemen that next day, on the slopes of Bannockburn, Edward Bruce was able to bear the brunt of attack by the English columns, hurl them into unutterable ruin among the Milton bogs, and so set seal, once for all, to Scottish independence and freedom.

It was probably owing to the high value that the Scots had learnt to set upon ash timber, both for military and domestic use, that this tree was more commonly planted than any other in compliance with the statute of James II. (fourteenth Parliament, cap. 80), requiring every landowner to cause his tenants to plant and maintain trees in number proportioned to the extent of their holdings. This was in 1424; in 1573 it was re-enacted, along with "sindrie louabil and gud Acts," by 6 James vi. c. 84; whereof the effect may still be traced in the landscape of many parts of Scotland in the shape of old ash trees standing round farmhouses and other homesteads. Often, where two or more farms have been thrown into one, the trees remain long after the disused buildings have been removed.

Belief in the medicinal virtues of the ash was very general in early times, probably derived from the Orient, where the manna ash (_F. ornus_) abounds. Yet Pliny, who recognised the difference between the two species, not only recommended extract of the common ash as a draught to cure snake-bites and as superior to any other remedy when applied to ulcers, but solemnly affirms that he has himself proved that if ash leaves are laid in a circle round a snake and a fire, the snake will crawl into the fire rather than touch the leaves. Even sage John Evelyn recommended ash extract to cure deafness, toothache and other ailments, and, later still, Gilbert White of Selborne describes the superstitious practice of passing sickly children through the stems of ash-trees, split for that purpose, in the belief that, if the clefts grew together again after the wedges were removed, the patients would recover. For household purposes, ash provides excellent firewood, which burns as well green as dry.

The tallest ash measured by Mr. H. J. Elwes in 1907, stood 146 feet high, and was 12 feet 7 inches in girth 5 feet from the ground. This fine tree is growing with many others of about equal height in Lord Darnley's park at Cobham, in Kent. The tallest ash recorded in Scotland was one at Mount Stuart, in the Island of Bute, stated to have been 134 feet high in 1879; but this has now disappeared. The loftiest certified by Messrs. Elwes and Henry as still standing is a great tree at Dalswinton, in Dumfriesshire, which, in 1904, stood 110 feet high, with a girth of only 8 feet 3 inches. Sir Archibald Buchan-Hepburn, however, claims to have one at Smeaton Hepburn measuring 124 feet in height and 11 feet in girth in 1908.

Weeping ashes have rather gone out of vogue, but they are very pretty things if the sport is grafted on a sufficiently high stem and the stock be not suffered to outgrow the graft, as it will do if not attended to. By far the most successful example of this kind of freak tree is the one at Elvaston Castle, near Derby, 98 feet high with branches hanging to a length of 60 or 70 feet, a truly remarkable object, and beautiful withal, as may be seen from the fine plate in Messrs. Elwes and Henry's book. Although its requirement of a deep, cool and generous soil render the ash unsuitable for London conditions, yet there are a few handsome weeping ashes in that city, notably one at the south-west corner of Bedford Square.

Like all our indigenous trees, the ash has impressed itself upon our place-names. Ashby, Ashton, Ashridge, Ascot--the map of England is peppered freely with such names; that of Scotland more sparsely, owing to the preponderance of Gaelic in the topography. The Gael employed several forms of his name for the ash, namely, _fuinnse_, _fuinnsean_, and _fuinnseog_ (pronounced funsha, funshan, and funshog), whence many names in southern and western Ireland such as Funcheon, a river in Cork, Funshin, and Funshinagh several times in Connaught. But the initial consonant soon dropped off, and in northern Ireland and among the Scottish Gaels the word became _uinnse_ (inshy) preserved in the name Inshaw Hill (Wigtownshire), Killyminshaw (Dumfriesshire), etc.; or _uinnseog_ (inshog), recognisable in Inshock (Forfar), Inshaig (Argyll), Inshog (Nairn), Drumnaminshoch and Knockninshock (Kirkcudbright). The plural _uinnsean_ (inshan) has assumed a very grotesque form in Wigtownshire, where there are two farms twenty miles apart named Inshanks.

Liability to disease is an important consideration in regard to forest trees, and the ash has the merit of being remarkably free from ailments. The worst malady from which it is liable to suffer seriously is known as ash canker, whereby the timber is rendered worthless except for firing. Happily it does not seem very contagious; for I have known badly cankered trees standing for twenty years and more without imparting the disease to their healthy neighbours. The late Dr. Masters attributed the mischief to the work of the larva of a small moth (_Tinea curtisella_). That creature may start the injury, but it is certainly taken up and aggravated by the fungoid organism _Nectria ditissima_. Although, as aforesaid, the disease does not appear to be readily communicable to healthy trees, it is not advisable to leave the unsightly invalids standing. The sooner they are cut down and burnt the better.

There are between fifty and sixty exotic species of ash, but among them there is only one known to me as specially desirable for ornamental planting, namely, the Manna Ash (_Fraxinus ornus_), producing a profusion of creamy-white plumes of blossom in June. This pretty tree is the source of the manna of commerce, a sweet and mildly laxative substance obtained by tapping the stem in late summer and allowing the sap which flows from the wound to coagulate.