rods for the detecting and finding out of minerals; at least, if that tradition be no imposture."

THE BEAKED HAZEL. C. Rostrata. Aiton.

This is a somewhat smaller shrub than the common hazel, being from two to six feet in height, and it is of much less frequent occurrence. Yet there are few country towns in which the boys are not acquainted with the taste of its nuts. The recent shoots are brown and smooth, sprinkled with a few gray dots. The older branches are rough and darker, and the stem a grayish brown. The leaves are on very short, nearly smooth footstalks, pear-shaped, narrowed towards the base, and heart-shaped, ending in a point, doubly and irregularly serrate, smooth above, somewhat downy or hairy beneath. The nut is small and roundish, enclosed in a bristly husk which fits its shape at the base, but is lengthened into a jagged beak at the extremity, like a narrow, long-necked bottle. By this it is easily distinguished from the common hazel, as well as by the inferiority in the size and quality of the nuts. 'These grow on the ends of the branches, in bunches of two to eight or nine; most of which never come to perfection.

This is a northern species. Dr. Richardson found it in Canada, as far north as the Saskatchawan. On the highest mountains of the Alleghany range, it occurs in the southwestern part of the country.

Messrs. Prince, of Long Island, found that the European hazel grows perfectly well in our climate; a single bush annually producing half a bushel of filberts.

The Constantinople hazel is a tree of sometimes fifty or sixty feet in height.

FAMILY III. THE HORNBEAM FAMILY. CARPINA CEE.

This family is nearly allied to the oak family, from which it is distinguished by having its female flowers arranged in a loose terminal ament, which becomes an open, pendulous, compound fruit resembling a hop. The male flowers are on long, cylindrical, tassel-like aments, formed of simple, imbricate scales, with twelve or more stamens attached to the base of the scales.

It contains small trees, found in the temperate zone of both hemispheres, remarkable for the solidity, strength and toughness of their wood; with annual, alternate, simple, entire leaves. The buds are covered with imbricate scales, investing and separating the plaited leaves.

It comprehends two genera of trees found here: The Hornbeam, with its naked nut concealed in the axil of a leaf-like bract; and

The Hop-Hornbeam, whose nut is covered by a hairy, inflated, membranous sack.

III. 1. THE HORNBEAM.

CARPINUS. L.

Small trees, with a smooth, fluted or irregular trunk, and alternate, entire leaves. The female flowers are in loose aments, made of small, scale-like, changed leaves, in pairs. These, enlarged, contain the fruit, which is a small, ribbed, bony nut in the angle of a changed, halbert-shaped, or three-lobed leaf. There are about six species, one of which only is found in New England.

THE AMERICAN HORNBEAM. C. Americana. Michaux.

Figured in Michaux; Sylva, Plate 108.

The hornbeam is a small tree, easily distinguished by its trunk, which is marked with longitudinal, irregular ridges, resembling those on the horns of animals of the deer kind. From its great resemblance to the European species, it received at once from the earliest settlers this good old English descrip

tive name.*

The bark is smooth, like that of a beech, and of a dark bluish gray or slate color, whence it is sometimes called the blue beech.

The trunk is a short irregular pillar, not unlike the massive, reeded columns of Egyptian architecture, with projecting ridges which run down from each side of the lower branches. The branches are irregular, waving or crooked, going out at various but large angles, and usually from a low point on the trunk. The recent shoots are very slender and tapering, somewhat hairy, and brownish or purple. The older branchlets are of a dark ashen gray with a pearly lustre.

The leaves are very much like those of the black birch. They are on short footstalks, elliptical or oblong, two to three inches long and one to one and one-half broad, rounded at the base, sharply and unequally serrate, smooth and slightly impressed at the veins above, paler and softly hairy along the veins and with a prominent tuft of hair at the axil of the veins beneath. The footstalk is a little hairy; the buds oval. The autumn colors of the leaves are different shades of scarlet and crimson.

The male catkins come out before the leaves, on the sides of the branches. They are an inch or usually less than an inch long, and look as if they had been stunted in their growth. They are set with broad-ovate, pointed scales, within which are twelve or more anthers resting by their base on short filaments. The female catkins come out of the same bud with the leaves, at the ends of the smaller branches, so that the fruit is in clusters terminating a short, leafy branchlet. When mature, the compound fruit-heads are on very slender footstalks of from one to twothirds their length, and consist of a series of alternate pairs of transformed, sagittate leaves, growing together at base, and forming each a cup enclosing an egg-shaped, eight-sided nut, in a thin, dark brown, ribbed husk, crowned with the stigma. The

He says,

* Gerard thought otherwise in regard to the derivation of this name. of the corresponding English species, "The wood or timber is better for arrowes and shafts, pulleyes for mils, and such like devices, than elme or wich-hazell; for, in time, it waxeth so hard, that the toughness and hardness of it may be rather compared to horn than unto wood; and therefore it was called hornebeam or hardbeam.-Herball, p. 1479.

nut is flattened on one side, of a woody texture, and contains a small kernel which tastes somewhat like a chestnut.

When growing by itself, in open ground, the hornbeam is a low tree, with a broad, round, crowded, leafy head, the lower branches bending nearly to the ground on every side. Its general aspect and figure are like those of the beech, and it is more uniform in its appearance than any other tree.

It is found in every part of the State and in almost every variety of soil except the most barren; but flourishes only in rich moist land. It is never a large tree. I measured one by the side of the Agawam River, near Chester Village, which was three feet nine inches in circumference above the bulging of the roots, and about thirty feet high; one in Brookline measured two feet six inches at two feet from the ground; and I have often seen it of similar dimensions. It is usually five or six inches in diameter and about twenty feet high. From the situations in which it is commonly found growing, on the steep sides of river banks, and cold, clayey hills, it is rarely erect, but generally inclined obliquely upwards, with very large, spreading branches.

It is of slow growth, and is supposed to live to a great age. The wood is white, close-grained and compact, and has great strength. It is used for beetles, levers, and for other purposes, where strength and solidity are required; and it is well fitted for the use of the turner. The corresponding species in Europe is much esteemed as fuel, and in France its charcoal is preferred to most others. The hornbeam is a tree of considerable beauty. Its smooth, fluted trunk is an interesting object to one curious in forest history; its foliage is remarkable for its softness, and the fruit is unlike that of every other tree. The crimson, scarlet and orange of its autumnal colors, mingling into a rich purplish red as seen at a distance, make it rank in splendor almost with the tupelo and the scarlet oak. It is easily cultivated and should have a corner in every collection of trees.

According to Michaux, this tree is found in Nova Scotia, and Pursh found it in Florida. It is common in all the New England States, in New York and Pennsylvania, and in Carolina and Georgia.

III. 2. THE HOP HORNBEAM.

OSTRYA. L.

To this genus belong low trees or shrubs of the temperate zones in both hemispheres. The sterile flowers are in cylindrical, pendent aments; the fertile, in short, slender aments, which, when mature, have a striking resemblance to a hop, and are made up of inflated sacks containing a brown nut. There are few species, of which one is a native of the south of Europe, and one only, of this country.

THE AMERICAN HOP HORNBEAM.

O. Virginica. Willdenow.

Figured in Michaux; Sylva, Plate 109; in Abbott's Insects, II, Plate 76; and poorly in Audubon's Birds, Plate 40.

The hop hornbeam is a handsome, small, slender tree, easily distinguished when in fruit by the resemblance of its spike of seed-vessels to a hop. The leaves are similar to those of the black birch and of the hornbeam, from the former of which they may be distinguished by the absence of the chequer-berry taste, and from the latter, by being more elliptical. The twigs are distinguished from both by their extreme toughness. bark on the trunk is dark grayish, and is remarkable for being divided into very fine portions, three or four inches long, easily scaling off, narrower than the divisions on any other roughbarked tree, and continuing to become finer and narrower as the tree grows older.

The

The branches are rather small, long and slender, and make a large angle with the stem, forming an open head. The bark on the younger ones is smooth, and of a reddish copper or bronze or dark purplish brown color, like the cherry tree, dotted with white or gray. These dots lengthen horizontally, as on the bark of the birch, and the smoothness and deep color continue till the branch or stem is two or three inches thick, when the bark begins to crack and become grayish.

The recent shoots are very slender, of a reddish green dotted with brown; the older shoots are small and tapering, giving, with the leaves expanding in the same plane, great softness of appearance to one of the toughest trunks of the woods.