cupule. Individually these female flowers possess a perianth whose mouth is minutely toothed, within which is a three-sided, three-celled ovary surmounted by three slender spreading styles and stigmas. As the three-cornered fruits grow and ripen, the cupule becomes hard and its outer scales spiny; the four valves part and turn back to disclose and set free the smooth brown nuts or "mast," beloved of swine. In France an oil is expressed from the mast, and the latter is also used as a food for poultry, like its namesake, the Buckwheat (see page 118). It is from these edible qualities that the genus gets its name, derived from the Greek, phago—to eat.
There are many varieties of the Common Beech to be met in plantations, such as the Copper Beech, the Purple Beech, the Variegated Beech, the Cut-leaved Beech, the Crested Beech, the Weeping Beech, the White Beech, etc.
Sweet Chestnut (Castanea vulgaris).
On light sandy soils, where little else but fir and heath will
grow, one may meet with considerable plantations of the Sweet
or Spanish Chestnut. For centuries, and until quite recently,
it was considered to be a native; but it is never found here
forming natural forests, and only in the South in favourable
situations does it ripen its fruit—usually small. Great
plausibility was given to the supposition that Castanea was a native
by the oft-repeated statement that its timber was to be seen in
the roof of Westminster Abbey and in other old buildings.
An examination of this timber years ago by Dr. Lindley—the
eminent botanist—proved it to be oak, which it closely
resembles. Again it was claimed as British on account of the
great antiquity of certain living trees, such as "the great
Chestnut of Tortworth," a name it bore in the reign of Stephen,
when it must have been an ancient tree. It is now generally
understood that the Chestnut was brought hither by the
