CHAPTER V.
_Of the Beech._ I.The beech, [_fagus_] (of two or three kinds) and numbred amongst the glandiferous trees, I rank here before the martial ash, because it commonly grows to a greater stature.

But here I may not omit a note of the accurate critic Palmerius, upon a passage in Theophrastus,{75:1} where he animadverts upon his interpreter, and shews that the ancient +Phegos+ was by no means the beech, but a kind of oak; for that the figure of the fruit is so widely unlike it, that being round, this triangular; and both Theophrastus and Pausanias make it indeed a species of oak, (as already we have noted in cap.

III.) wholly differing in trunk, as well as fruit and leaf; to which he adds (what determines the controversie) +xylon tes phelou ischyrotaton kai asepesaton+, &c.

_that it is of a firmer timber, not obnoxious to the worm_; neither of which can so confidently be said of the beech.

Yet La Cerda too seems guilty of the same mistake: But leaving this, there are of our _fagi_, two or three kinds with us; the mountain (where it most affects to grow) which is the whitest, and most sought after by the turner; and the campestrial or wild, which is of a blacker colour, and more durable.