curiously trimmed with garden shears. He adds, "this grove was, in old times, consecrated to Diana, by the common consent of all the inhabitants of Latium, who paid their devotions there.' To one of the beech-trees he says, 'Passienus Crispus, an excellent orator, who was twice consul, and afterwards married the empress Agrippina, was so much attached, that he not only reposed under it, but sprinkled it plentifully with wine, and would even embrace it.'

"Manlius Curius protested with an oath, that of all the booty and pillage taken from the enemy, he had reserved nothing for himself but a cruet, or little ewer, made of beech-wood, wherein he intended to sacrifice to the gods.

"The beech, it will be observed, from the class in which it is ranged, produces both male and female flowers on the same tree. The fruit succeeds the latter blossoms, which have a one-leafed empalement, cut into four parts, but have no petals: the germen is fixed to the empalement, which afterwards becomes a roundish capsule, armed with soft pines opening in three cells, each containing a triangular nut, called the beech mast. This nut is palatable to the taste, but when eaten in great quantities, occasions head-aches and giddiness; nevertheless, when dried and ground into meal, it makes a wholesome bread.

"An oil, equal in flavour to the best olive oil, with the advantage of keeping longer without becoming rancid, may be obtained from the nuts by pressure. It is very common in Picardy and other parts of France, where the masts abound; in Silesia it is used by the country people instead of butter. The cakes which remain from the pressure are given to fatten swine, oxen, and poultry. A bushel of masts is said to produce a gallon of clean oil; but the beech-tree seldom produces a full crop of masts oftener than once in three years.

"A few years ago an attempt was made to introduce the making of beech oil into this country, and a patent was granted to the projector; but the difficulty of bringing the country people into any new measure, however beneficial to them, is so great, that it often destroys the best-concerted projects. In this instance it was found that they would rather let the swine consume the masts, than suffer their children to collect them for sale to the patentee; and thus failed the making of salad oil in England.

"In the reign of George the First, we find a petition was made for letters patent for making butter from beech-nuts. At the beginning of the last century, Aaron Hill had a project for paying off the national debt with the oil of beech-nuts! We conclude that he intended to have it used with a sponge.

"The finest beeches in England are said to grow in Hampshire. The forest of St. Leonard, near Horsham, in Sussex, abounds with noble beech-trees. The cottagers of this forest inform you, that when St. Leonard wished to rest beneath these trees, he was disturbed during the day by the biting of vipers, and his repose was broken in the night by the warbling of nightingales, and on that account they were removed by his prayers, since which time tradition says of this forest

The viper has ne'er been known to sting,
Nor the nightingale e'er heard to sing.'

"The shade of the beech-tree is very injurious to most sorts of plants that grow near it, but is generally believed to be very salubrious to human bodies. The leaves of the beech are collected in the autumn to fill mattresses, instead of flock or straw, as they remain sweet, and continue soft for many years. Thus Juvenal observes,

Silva domus, cubilia frondes.'

'The wood's a house, the leaves a bed.'

"To chew beech-leaves is accounted good for the gums and teeth. The Romans used beech-leaves and honey to restore the growth of hair, which had fallen from sickness.

"Mr. Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, speaks of a beech at Chantilly, about seventeen miles from Paris, which, he says, 'is` straight as an arrow, and not less than eighty or ninety feet high; forty feet to the first branch, and four yards in diameter at five feet from the ground.'

"In the Extraits et Notices des MSS. &c. tome 3, p. 300, it is stated that on Ascension Eve, the curate of Douremy, on the borders of Lorraine, usually performed a religious ceremony under a beech called the Tree of the Fairies, for the express purpose of keeping the fairies at a distance. It was under this tree that the unfortunate Joan of Arc paid homage to those imaginary creatures, according to her absurd accusers.

"One charge against the Maid of Orleans, (when tried in 1431 for witchcraft and heresy,) was her declaration, that St. Margaret and St. Catherine had revealed themselves, and spoken to her under the great tree, which, as is commonly reported, the fairies frequented. Joan acknowledged that she had gone with other girls, who amused themselves innocently singing and dancing near the beech called Handsome May, or Fairy-tree,' formerly haunted, as people said, by the fairies; but she employed herself there in making nosegays for the holy virgin of Douremy; she had seen angels and the two saints above mentioned, not exactly at the Fairy-tree, but at the fountain near it.' See her Trial in the Extraits et Notices des MSS. tome 3, page 58.)

"The timber of these trees in point of actual utility, follows next to the oak and the ash, and is little inferior to the elm for waterpipes. Between the years 1790 and 1800, when John Aldridge, Esq., of New Lodge, St. Leonard's forest, was causing fish-ponds to be dug in the neighbourhood, the workmen found scantlings of beechtimber and trunks of old trees, squared out, which were supposed to have been buried in the earth since the time of the Romans, as there is no record mentioning that part of the forest having been cleared, or of fish-ponds made there since. Beech-timber is subject to worms when exposed to the air without paint. It is used by wheelwrights and chairmakers, and also by turners for domestic wood-ware, such as bowls, shovels, &c. Bedsteads and other furniture are often made with this timber; and no wood splits so fine, or holds so well together as beech; so that boxes, sword-sheaths, and a variety of other things are made from it. When the art of splitting this wood was first known in England, the parties who used it kept the method a profound secret for many years,

"The inhabitants of London are indebted to this tree for the baskets called pottles, in which they are so well supplied with strawberries.

No wars did men molest

When only beechen bowls were in request.-TIBULLUS.

"Of the ancient use of beech-timber the poet tells us :

In the world's best years the humble shed

Was happily and well furnished:

Beech made their chairs, their beds, and the joined stools;
Beech made the board, the platters, and the bowls.'

"Virgil notices its use in husbandry:—

Of beech the plough-tail, and the bending yoke.'

"In the pastorals of the same author we learn how highly the rustics of his country esteemed their beechen bowls, and to what perfection carving was carried even in common furniture:

The pawn I proffer shall be full as good,
Two bowls I have, well turned, of beechen wood;
Both by divine Alcimedon were made;
To neither of them yet the lip is laid;
The lids are ivy, grapes in clusters lurk
Beneath the carving of the curious work;

Two figures on the sides embossed appear;

Conon, and-what's his name-who made the sphere,
And show'd the seasons of the sliding year.'

And I have two to match your pair at home,

The wood the same, from the same hand they came,
The kimbo handles seem with bear's foot carved,
And never yet to table have been served.'-DRYDEN.

"The beech-tree thrives in chalky or stony ground, where most other timber trees will not prosper, and it is found to resist winds on the declivities of hills better than most trees; where the soil is tolerably good, beech will become fit to be felled in about twenty-five years. There is no tree better calculated to train as espaliers for the purpose of screening the garden or orchard from winds than the beech, which when so grown is often found to retain its brown leaves all the winter.

"This tree is propagated by sowing the masts, which should be gathered about the middle of September, when they begin to fall, and spread out on a mat in an airy place for a week to dry, when you may either sow them immediately, or put them into bags to be sown in the spring, when there is less danger of their being destroyed by vermin. These nuts do not require to be covered more than one inch deep in the mould, and it will be observed that only a part of them germinates the first year."

EXTRACTS.

THE actions of men are oftener determined by their characters than by their interest-their conduct takes its colour more from their acquired tastes, inclinations, and habits, than from a deliberate regard to their greatest good. It is only on great occasions the mind awakes to take an extended survey of her whole course, and that she suffers the dictates of reason to impress a new bias upon her movements. The actions of each day, are, for the most part, links which follow each other in the chain of custom. Hence the great effort of practical wisdom is to imbue the mind with right tastes, affections, and habits-the elements of character and masters of action.

Si l'on examine le cours de la destinée humaine, on verra que la légèreté peut conduire à tout ce qu'il y a de mauvais dans ce monde. Il n'y a que l'enfance dans qui la légèreté soit un charme. Quand le tems livre l'homme à lui-même, ce n'est que dans le sérieux de son ame qu'il trouve des pensées, des sentiments, des vertus.

DES qu'on se met à négocier avec les circonstances tout est perdu, car il n'est personne qui n'ait des circonstances. La leçon qu'il importe le plus de donner aux hommes dans ce monde, c'est de ne transiger avec aucune considération quand il s'agit du devoir.

BAKER AND SON, PRINTERS, SOUTHAMPTON.

IN the history of Joseph, as presented to us in the sublime simplicity of scripture language, we have a picture, brief and beautiful, of the mode in which the Almighty Being rules the affairs of this sublunary world; and in the conduct of Joseph an example of the manner in which that governance is understood and submitted to by his people. Here was no apparent interference with the ordinary course of natural events. The envy of Joseph's brethren was the natural movement of an evil mind against the excellence that shamed it: and the results of that envy were what perhaps they always would be, did the fear of God or man not put restraint on the indulgence of our passions. God they feared not, and from man they hoped their actions might remain concealed. They vainly fancied, as others do, that it was in their power to defeat the purposes of heaven, to make a change in the appointed course of events, determine the fortunes of their brother and amend their own. They took the measures best suited to their purpose, and rested long in the persuasion that they had accomplished it. It is even so that the affairs of this world in general are transacted. The deeds of darkness and of blood, the VOL. I.

Y