The Beeches

“ A blue sky requires greensward and green woods—the sward is pale and the woods are slow; the cuckoo calls for his leaves.
Farther along the edge of the valley the beeches thicken, and the turf is covered by the shrunken leaves of last year. Empty hulls of beechmast crunch under foot, the brown beech leaves have drifted a foot deep against the trunk of a felled tree. Beech leaves lie at rest in the cover of furze, sheltered from the wind; suddenly a little cloud of earth rises like dust as a startled cock pheasant scrambles on his wings with a scream. ”

“ If the towering elm-trees by the lane-side showed no fretting of amber in their greenery, nor the beeches sent down their steady rain of russet, there would still be one indubitable mark of the season—the voice of the hives themselves.
Rich and wavering and low in the sweet autumn sunlight, it comes over to you now with the very spirit of rest in every halting tone. There is work, of a kind, doing in the bee-garden. A steady tide of bees is stemming out from and home to every hive. ”

“ By and by patches of blue shone between the boughs before us, a sign that the summit was near, and before one o'clock we stood upon the narrow ridge forming the crest of the mountain. Here, although we were between five and six thousand feet above the sea, the woods of beech were a hundred feet in height, and shut out all view. On the northern side the forest scenery is even grander than on the southern. The beeches are magnificent trees, straight as an arrow, and from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet in height. ”

“ The beeches are so frosty in their indignant withdrawal that the icy whispering of their dry leaves sounds like fast falling sleet. Slip among them when you are next on the hill, shut your eyes and listen. The day may be as sunny and warm as a winter day can be, but you will think you hear the snow falling fast and will be sorry you have not brought your fur muffler. ”

“ So birds and squirrels held undisputed possession of that part of the Valley, and the grass grew long and the vines climbed high, and often the soft whisper of the leaves was the only sound to be heard.
But in the shady beech grove, next the churchyard, and across the avenue from Mrs. MacIntyre's, the noise of hammer and saw and trowel had gone on unceasingly, until at last the new home was ready for its occupants. The family did not have far to move to "The Beeches"; only over the stile from the quaint green-roofed cottage next door, where they had spent the summer. ”

“ To these add bright sunlight and leaf shadow, the sudden lowering of tint as a cloud passes, the different aspects of the day and the evening, and the changes of rain and dry weather. You may look at the bark of a beech twenty times and always find it different. After crossing Virgil's Bridge in the deep coombe at the bottom of Marden Hill these great beeches begin, true woodland trees, and somehow more forest-like than the hundreds and hundreds of acres of fir trees that are called forest. There is another spirit among the beech trees; they look like deer and memories of old English life. ”

“ They never cease until new leaves come out in the spring to push off the old ones. I love to stand beneath them with my ear to the trunks, interpreting what they say to fit my moods. The beeches branch low, and their leaves are small so they only know common earthly things; but the oaks run straight above almost all other trees before they branch, their arms are mighty, their leaves large. They meet the winds that travel around the globe, and from them learn the big things.”
Philip studied the girls face. “What do the beeches tell you, Elnora?” ”

“ Once Oliver pointed out the long, lean flank of a grey pig, or fern-hog, as the animal rushed away among the brake. There were several glades, from one of which they startled a few deer, whose tails only were seen as they bounded into the underwood, but after the glades came the beeches again. Beeches always form the most beautiful forest, beeches and oak ”

“ The beeches are behind most forest trees, but the leaves and some of the flowers are coming out here and there. It is given as a general rule, that those trees which keep their leaves longest in autumn are the earliest in spring, but the beech is a striking exception to this; preserving its withered leaves tenaciously even through the winter, but putting out the new foliage after many of its companions are quite green. The Comptonia or sweet-fern is in flower, the brown, catkin-like blossoms are nearly as fragrant as the foliage; it is the only fern we have with woody branches. ”

“ A little further from the haunts of picnic parties, we shall come upon beech woods that have not thus been abused by thoughtless jack-knives. From the ground, far up into the high tops, a close, beautiful garment of ashy grey bark clothes the tree. Saplings of all ages grow up among the big trees, for beeches grow in colonies. A soft radiance from these many pale tree trunks seems to lighten the woods paths, overshadowed by the dense foliage of the tree tops. ”

“ The picturesque beauty of the beech depends very much on its soil and situation. It should not be encroached upon by other trees, but have free scope to expand its elegant foliage and branches. Beeches thrive best on calcareous hills, and abound in the vein of chalk which runs through Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, and branches out into Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. In the latter country—which by the way derives its name from the beeches—the beech grows to a large size. ”

“ The man who planted beeches in a hedgerow was about the silliest jackass I’ve ever heard of. Any tree’s bad enough, but a beech of all things—why, it’s drip, drip, drip, all the time, and not a thing will grow under them. ”

“ Like most pollarded trees, their girth is enormous, and their moss-grown roots are thrown out in curious contortions, grasping the ground, as if setting all storms at defiance. Every lover of sylvan scenery will be able to appreciate the beauty of these beeches—
Scathed by the lightning’s bolt, the wintry storm,
A giant brotherhood, ye stand sublime ”

“ Right near by is a company of schoolgirl beeches, very straight and slim and fair-skinned and pale. These have drawn together in a shivering group and show every symptom of feminine dignity, very young and quite outraged. They whisper and draw themselves up to the full tenuity of their height and you can hear the dry snip of indignation in their voices long{99} before you reach them. ”

“ But with the gradual amelioration of the climate of our continent, which has been going on for several centuries, the beech, a more southern type of tree, has begun to spread slowly though surely northward. Now, beeches are greedy trees, of very dense and compact foliage; nothing else can grow beneath their thick shade, where once they have gained a foothold; and the seedlings of the silver birch stand no chance at all in the struggle for life against the serried leaves of their formidable rivals. ”

“ In the tawny-dappled sand bed of that clear water, and the gray-green dappled trunks of those beeches with their great, sinuous, long-muscled roots, was that something which man can never tame or garden out of the land: the strength of unconquerable fertility—the remote deep life in Nature's heart. ”

“ Late in winter, the [Pg 179] light gray branches of a beech thicket on a dry hillside on the edge of my home city called attention to their clean elegance amid sordid and forbidding surroundings, and it was with anger which I dare call righteous that I saw a hideous bill-board erected along the hillside, to shut out the always beautiful beeches from sight as I frequently passed on a trolley car! I have carefully avoided buying anything of the merchants who have thus set up their announcements where they are an insult ”

“ Beeches begin to mingle with the oaks, and in a day or two beeches and maples will predominate over other varieties of timbers; large white-woods and bass-woods will be seen towering above the forest. ”

“ It is a plant of Saturn, and therefore performs his qualities and proportion in these operations. The leaves of the Beech tree are cooling and binding, and therefore good to be applied to hot swellings to discuss them; the nuts do much nourish such beasts as feed thereon. The water that is found in the hollow places of decaying Beeches will cure both man and beast of any scurf, or running tetters, if they be washed therewith; you may boil the leaves into a poultice, or make an ointment of them when time of year serves. ”

“ The slaughter accomplished by man is so small a thing of itself in the carnage of the universe! The animals devour each other. The peaceful plants, the silent trees, are ferocious beasts one to another. The serenity of the forests is only a commonplace of easy rhetoric for the literary men who only know Nature through their books!... In the forest hard by, a few yards away from the house, there were frightful struggles always toward. The murderous beeches flung themselves upon the pines with their lovely pinkish stems, hemmed in their slenderness with antique columns, and stifled them. ”

“ Such is the Beech of the Frith Common. It stands alone in the centre of a beautiful common, covered with wild flowers and short herbage, and the fragrant thyme, among which the industrious bee loves to nestle, and to gather in her harvests. The nest of the skylark is among the juniper-bushes that skirt the margin of the common; its joyous tenant is up in air, warbling and rejoicing, and making his high home resound with melody. And well may he rejoice, for he has no sadness to damp his song, no earth-born cares to bring him down. ”

“ With the whole garden alive with flashing wings, and resounding with the rich deep hubbub of the swarm, the bees forming the remnant of the old colony go about their usual business in perfect unconcern, lancing straight off into the sunshine towards the clover-fields, or winging busily homeward laden with honey and pollen, just as they have been doing for weeks past. And if the hive be opened at this time, it will show nothing unusual except that no queen will be found. ”

“ They all knew of its curious habits; how it will guide a man to the nest of the wild bee, by fluttering before him from bush to bush and rock to rock until it reaches the spot; how it will wait until the hive has been robbed of its honey-treasure; and then alight by the despoiled nest to feed upon the larvae of the bees, or the fragments of honeycomb that may have been left! They all knew this of the honey-guide, because they had followed one before now, and proved the truth of this wonderful instinct, which has been doubted by many travellers as well as naturalists. ”

“ It is so dark and gloomy, and you get so little sun. My own preference has always been for a beech. An old beech has such delightful nooks and crannies, and often deep holes, sometimes deep and large enough to build a winter home in—always capital for the storage of nuts. There was no doubt, however, that the fir which father had chosen had many points to recommend it. It was an immensely tall tree, and thick as a hedge, yet there were no branches close to the ground to tempt evil-minded young humans like our recent invaders to climb up. ”

“ Coming gradually to more definite traces of human habitation, we may mention some of our tree names. Of several, such as ‘Nash,’ and ‘Nalder,’ and ‘Nokes,’ we have already spoken. Such a name as ‘Henry atte Beeche,’ or ‘Walter de la Lind,’ or ‘Richard atte Ok,’ now found as simple ‘Beech,’ and ‘Lind,’ and ‘Oake,’ reminds us that we are not without further obligations to the tree world. Settling by or under the shade of some gigantic elm or oak, a sobriquet of this kind would be perfectly natural. ”

“ On the hill where my papa's house stands there are a large number of beech-trees, and I and my two little brothers have just had a fine frolic gathering the queer three-sided little nuts. A beech forest is very beautiful in autumn, when the golden leaves are fluttering down to the ground, and the smooth, straight tree trunks tower upward like silver-gray giants. When we gathered the nuts we spread some old sheets and blankets under the tree, because the nuts are so very small that otherwise we would never have been able to find them among the heaps of dry leaves. ”

“ We soon discovered them to be our neighbours of the next farm, in pursuit of a swarm of bees which was hovering in the air over their heads. The bees at length alighted on the tall pear-tree in our orchard, and hung in a bunch from one of the boughs. A ladder was got, and a man ascending, with gloves on his hands, and an apron tied over his head, swept them into a hive which was rubbed on the inside with honey and sweet herbs. ”

“ I looked but could see nothing,—not a flower of any sort, nothing but oak, maple, birch, and young pine saplings just a little higher than my head. But the air was full of bees; yet not of swarming bees, for that is a different and unmistakable hum. Then I found myself in the thick of a copse of witch-hazel up and down the stems of which the bees were wildly buzzing. There was no dew left on the bushes, so it was not that they were after; on looking more closely I saw that they were crawling down the stems to the little burrs containing the seed of last fall's flowering. ”