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 Cæsar denies to be found in Britanny; _Materia cujusque generis, ut in Gallia, præter 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 and the joyn’d-stools, Beech made the board, the platters, and the bowls.{ 77:1}
With it the turner makes dishes, trays, rimbs for buckets, and other utensils, trenchers, dresser-boards, &c. likewise for the wheeler, joyner, for large screws, and upholster for sellyes, chairs, stools, bedsteads, &c. for the bellows-maker, and husbandman his shovel and spade-graffs; floates for fishers nets instead of corks, is made of its bark; for fuel, billet, bavin and coal, tho’ one of the least lasting: Not to omit even the very shavings for the fining of wines. Peter Crescentius writes, that the ashes of beech, with proper mixture, is excellent to make glass with. If the timber lie altogether under water, ’tis little inferior to elm, as I find it practised and asserted by shipwrights: Of old they made their _vasa vindemiatoria_ and _corbes messoriæ_ (as we our pots for strawberries) with the rind of this beech, nay, and vessels to preserve wine in, and that curiously wrought cup which the shepherd in the Bucolicks wagers withal, was engraven by Alcimedon upon the bark of this tree: And an happy age it seems: