CHAP. CV.

coryla'cea;. que'kcus.

1721

Bashan are mentioned as fit for rearing cattle and feeding swine (Numbers,xxxii.) ; and it is supposed to have been from this district that the great herdof swine were driven by our Saviour into the Sea of Gennesareth. (Spreng.Spec. Bot. Ant., 17.) The Romans used acorns for the same purpose. InStrabo’s time, Rome was chiefly supplied with hogs which were fattened onmast in the woods of Gaul. This mast is supposed to have been the acornsof the common and the Turkey oaks, and of the /'lex ; but the word mast issupposed by Burnet, in this case, to have included the mast of the beech, andthe nuts of the chestnut. Many laws were anciently enacted relatively toacorns. The Romans expressly provided by the laws of the Twelve Tables,that the owner of a tree might gather up his acorns, though they should havefallen on another man’s ground. ( Pliny Nat. Hist., xvi. 6.) In more moderntimes, acorns appear to have been used as a common food for man, as well asfor swine. “ Little as we now depend for sustenance on the fruits of our foresttrees,” Burnet observes, “ and great as is the value of their wood, the reversewas formerly the case : oak corn, that is, ac-cern, or acorns, some centuriesago, formed an important food both for man and beast.” ( Amcen. Quer., fol. 1.)In the present day, the native oak of Tunis, Quercus pseudo-cocci fera, is calledthe meal-bearing tree; probably, as Smith observes, from the use of the acornsas food; and F. A. Michaux mentions that the American Indians obtain an oilfrom the acorns of the live oak, which they use in cookery. Pliny tells usthat, in his time, acorns formed the chief wealth of many nations; and that,in time of scarcity, mast was sometimes ground into meal, tempered withwater, and made into bread. He also informs us that, in Spain, acorns werethen brought to table to eat; and Strabo states that, in the mountainous partsof that country, the inhabitants ground their acorns into meal. (See ChoulHeVar. Quer. Hist.) During the war in the Peninsula, both the natives and theFrench frequently fed on the acorns met with in the woods of Portugal andSpain, The numerous herds of swine, which still constitute the chief terri-torial riches of Spain, are fed, Captain S. E. Cook informs us, on the acorns ofthe evergreen oaks, which abound in almost every part of the country. In theMorea and Asia Minor, acorns are still sold as food. Desfontaines seems tohave relished those of the Quercus Ballota, which are sold in the public mar-kets of Morocco and Algiers, and eaten by the Moors, both raw and roasted.Michaux ate acorns in Bagdad, and speaks with particular praise of thosewhich grow in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, which, he says, are as long as thefinger. He also ate and relished the acorns of Spain. ( Michx. Hist, des Chenes.)The antiquity of oak forests is attested by the numerous trees which havebeen dug out of bogs, or raised up from the beds of rivers, after having lainthere apparently for many centuries. Fossil oaks, which are particularlyabundant in the Isle of Portland, in the limestone known as Portland stone,and of which there is a fine specimen in the front of the magnificent conser-vatory at Syon House, also afford proof of the great antiquity of thistree. An immense fossil oak was raised from the neighbourhood of thesalt pits in Transylvania, in which the woody matter appeared to have beenin great part converted into hard salt. Abundance of subterranean oakshave been dug up in Pembrokeshire; and, in the Philosophical Transactions,an enormous oak is said to have been discovered in Hatfield Bog in York-shire, which was 18 ft. in circumference at the upper end where broken off,and 36 ft. in circumference at the lower end; and, though but a fragment,it measured 120 ft. in length. The timber was perfectly sound; though,from some of the coins of the Emperor Vespasian being found in the bognear it, it is conjectured to have lain there above a thousand years, and maypossibly have remained there ever since the great battle fought in HatfieldForest, between Ostorius and Caractacus, a.d. 52.

The botanical History of the oak may be considered as commencing withthe time of Bauhin, who described more sorts than Linnaeus. The latter, inhis Species Plantarum, ed. 3., published in 1744, described II species ; Will-denow, in his edition of the same work, described 76; Persoon, in the Synopsis