Chapter Traveller to Trees noted for Specific Virtues and Uses of T by Brewer's Readers Handbook

part nor lot with the faithful.” On these beeches are cut the names of Charles XI., Charles XII., queen Eleonora, and other distinguished visitors. Other famous beeches are the Frankley Beeches, in Worcestershire.

Virgil’s bowl, divini opus Alcimedontis, was made of beech wood, and Pliny tells us that vessels used in the temples were made sometimes of the same wood.

The beech, like the fir and chestnut, is very destructive of vegetation beneath.

(5) Birch, used by the ancients for papyrus. The wood is used for the heels of shoes, cradles, packing- boxes, sabots, drinking-cups, brooms or besoms, rods, torches, and charcoal.

“It supplies the northern peasant with his house, his bread, his wine, and the vessels to put it in, part of his clothing, and the furniture of his bed.”—Sylvan Sketches.

Birch loves the coldest places.—B. P.

(6) Blackthorn is formed into teeth for rakes and into walking-sticks. Letters written on linen or woollen with sloe-juice will not wash out. It is said that Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff on the south ridge of Weary-all Hill (now Werrall), where it grew and put forth blossoms every Christmas Day afterwards. The original tree was destroyed in the reign of Charles I. by a puritan soldier, who lost his life by a splinter which wounded him while so employed. The variety which blossoms twice a year is now pretty common.

The Holy Thorn has been introduced into many parts, and is now grown in several gardens about Glastonbury and its vicinity. Pilgrimages continued to be made to this tree even in Mr. Eyston’s time, who died 1721.—Warner: Evening Post, January 1753.

(7) Box, used for turnery, combs, mathematical instruments, knife-handles, tops, screws, button-moulds, wood engravings, etc. Box wood will sink in water.

A decoction of box wood promotes the growth of hair, and an oil distilled from its shavings is a cure for hemorrhoids, tooth-ache, epilepsy, and stomach-worms. So, at least, we are told.

(8) Cedar, used for cigar-boxes. It is hateful to moths and fleas; hence it is used for lining wardrobes and drawers.

(9) Cherry Tree, used by the turner, formed into chairs and hoops. It is stained to imitate mahogany, to which wood, both in grain and colour, it approaches nearer than any other of this country. It is stained black for picture-frames. The cherry tree was first introduced from Flanders into Kent, in the reign of Henry VIII.

More than a hundred men, during a siege, were kept alive for nearly two months, without any other sustenance than a little of this gum taken into the mouth and suffered gradually to dissolve.—Hasselquist: Iter Palæstinum (1757).

(10) Chestnut Tree, the tree introduced into the pictures of Salvator Rosa. The wood is used by coopers and for water-pipes, because it neither shrinks nor changes the colour of any liquor it contains. It is, however, bad for posts; and grass will not grow beneath its shade.

Staves that nor shrink nor swell,
The cooper’s close-wrought cask to chestnut owes.
   —Dodsley.

The roof of Westminster Abbey, and that of the “Parliament House,” Edinburgh, are made of chestnut wood.

In Cobham Park, Kent, is a chestnut tree 40 feet in girth (5 feet from the ground).—Strutt: Sylva Britannica.