it affords food for many kinds of birds, such as the wild turkey, partridge or grouse, and especially the pigeon, and immense flocks of these collect in the beech forests in autumn to feed upon the nuts. Deer are very fond of these nuts, and so are all of the squirrel family, and the little ground squirrel or chipmunk, Tamias striatus, of our Northern States, gives us a good practical lesson in the way of preserving the nuts over winter. These little rodents pack away the nuts in small pockets in their burrows and from two to three feet below the surface, where they are protected from excessive moisture. and any considerable change of temperature. The chipmunk always stores the nuts in the ground, and not in hollow logs, as is sometimes asserted. The deer-mouse (Hesperomys leucopus), however, does select such places for putting away his winter's supply, but more frequently he chooses a hollow in the stem of some old tree, and several feet from the ground. Unlike the chipmunk, this mouse cleans the shells from the kernels, storing only the latter, and I have often found a quart or more when cutting down trees in winter. These kernels are usually so clean, bright, and free from odor, that it is to be feared the finder always confiscates them for his own use.

As the beechnut contains considerable oil, many schemes have been set on foot, in European countries, for its extraction and use as a salad oil. Early in the last century (1721) Aaron Hill, an English poet, proposed to pay off the national debt from the profits to be derived from the manufacture of beechnut oil; but his scheme fell through, like many others of its kind. It is also stated that Henry Fielding, so well known by his delightful stories of English society, once speculated rather largely on the manufacture of beechnut oil. In France, however, beechnut oil was formerly made in considerable quantities, and used in cooking fish and as

a salad oil. In Silesia it is used by the country people instead of butter, and the cakes which remain from the pressure are given to fatten swine, oxen and poultry. The forests of Eu and of Crécy, in the department of the Oise, it is stated by Duhamel du Monceau, have yielded, in a single season, more than 2,000,000 bushels of mast, but probably this referred to all kinds of nuts, and not beechnuts alone. Years later, or in 1779, Michaux states that the forests of Compiègne, near the Verberie department of the Somme, afforded oil enough to supply the wants of the district for more than half a century. In some parts of France beechnuts are roasted and served as a substitute for coffee. Many of these old forests have disappeared, but other kinds of nut trees are still being planted in France, and the product is simply enormous, and a source of wealth to the peasant, as well as the owners of extensive forests and orchards.

The beechnut has never been an article of commerce in this country, and it is rarely seen on sale in either country villages or our larger cities, not because of its scarcity or want of demand, but all that the country boys and girls find time to gather are wanted for their own pleasure and use. Picking up beechnuts among the leaves in a forest, or even after raking off the leaves and then whipping the trees, is, at best, slow and rather tedious work, as I know full well from experience, and only once do I remember of having secured a rounded half bushel as the sum total of many raids on the beech trees in the neighborhood. But as the beechnut is the diamond among the larger and less precious gems of our forests, we should set a higher value upon it because small and rather difficult to obtain.

CHAPTER IV.

CASTANOPSIS.

California chestnut. Western chinquapin. Evergreen chestnut.

Castanopsis, Spach. Name derived from Castanea, the chestnut. Order, Cupuliferæ. A genus of evergreen shrubs and trees, intermediate between the oaks (Quercus) and the chestnuts (Castanea). There are about a dozen species indigenous to Eastern Asia and the adjacent islands. Blume, in "Flora Javae,” Vol. II, 1828-36, describes three species under Castanea, which he found in the mountains and more elevated regions of the Javanese islands. Very little, however, is known of these oriental evergreen chestnuts outside of the herbariums of professional botanists, and they are rarely referred to, even in standard botanical dictionaries, or dictionaries of gardening, and when mentioned they are usually placed in the genus Castanea. Edouard Spach, a half-century or more ago, gave a synopsis of the genus, for which he proposed the name of Castanopsis, and although not recognized by botanists in general for a number of years, it is now accepted by botanical authorities everywhere. We have but one indigenous species, and this on the Pacific coast, viz:

Castanopsis chrysophylla, A. de Candolle. Castanea chrysophylla, Douglas. Castanea sempervirens, Kellogg.

"Leaves coriaceous, evergreen, lanceolate or oblong, one to four inches long, acuminate or only acutish (Fig. 10), cuneate at base and shortly petioled, entire green and glabrous above or somewhat scurfy, densely scurfy

beneath, with none or few yellow scales; male aments one to three inches long, densely pubescent; styles three, stout, glabrous, divergent; fruiting involucre with stout divergent spines (Fig. 11) one-half to one inch long,

FIG. 10.

LEAVES AND NUT OF CASTANOPSIS CHRYSOPHYLLA.

subverticillately many branched; nut usually solitary, obversely triangular, six lines long."-"Geological Survey of California," Botany, Vol. II, p. 100.

"This handsome broad-leaved evergreen tree is indigenous to the elevated regions, from Monterey, California, northward to the Columbia river in Oregon. It is also common in the Sierra Nevadas at elevations of six

thousand feet, but in its southern limits rarely below ten thousand feet elevation."-C. S. Sargent ("Woods of the United States ").

In the warmer and drier regions of California it is a mere shrub two to six feet high, and these dwarf forms have, in some instances, been described as varieties. As, for instance, Castanea chrysophylla, var. minor, Bentham; C. chrysophylla, var. minor, A. de Candolle; and C. chrysophylla, var. pumila, Vasey. But northward, where the cli

mate is more moist, it becomes a large tree fifty to one hundred and twenty feet high, with a stem two to three feet in diameter. In its wide variation in habit of growth, this western chinquapin is similar to our Eastern dwarf chestnut, which is mainly a low shrub in the more Southern States, but becomes a fair-sized tree in the Middle States, or near its northern limits.

I have introduced the Western chinquapin here among the nut-bearing trees, not with the idea that it will ever be extensively cultivated for its edible nuts, but because it is a beautiful broad-leaved evergreen tree, and of which we have far too few kinds in cultivation to give warmth and a cheerful aspect to our gardens and pleasure grounds in winter. It is true that, so far as can be learned at this time, no extended experiments have ever been made to introduce or cultivate the Castanopsis in the Atlantic States, consequently nothing pos