CHAP. CV.

coiiyla'cete. «ue'rcus.

1901

and downy. It seldom happens that more than one or two of these acornsarrive at perfection on one peduncle. Some trees of this species produceacorns which are sweet and eatable; others produce only such as are bitter.Both bitter and sweet acorns are sometimes found on the same tree : and thisimportant difference in taste and quality is accompanied by no differencewhatever in their external appearance. According to the observation of M.De la Peyrouse, the sweetest acorns are found on trees which grow in warmdry situations. In the climate of London, seedling plants grow with consi-derable rapidity ; attaining, in good loamy soil, from loft, to 20ft. in heightin 10 years from the acorn. As they become larger, they grow slower; and,after they have attained the height of 30 ft. or 40 ft., they increase in widthnearly as much as in height. The tree attains a great age, remaining in agrowing state for several centuries. Bose states that, when this species is cutdown, it never grows up again as a tree, but forms a bush ; which correspondsvery well with the habit and character of the plant: but art, in the case of thistree, as in that of every other that stoles, might, doubtless, form a tree from ashoot produced by a stool, by bestowing proper attention on the selecting ofa leading shoot, and on its future pruning and management.

Geography. The Quercus /Tex is a native of the south of Europe and thenorth of Africa. It is very common in Spain and Italy; and is indigenous,to France, as far north as Nantes and Angers. According to Bose, it nevergrows in masses like forests; but it is dispersed here and there among othertrees, more especially on hilly grounds, and near the sea. Captain S. E.Cook says that it grows in the first, or low and humid, region of Spain ; and,alone, serves to indicate the difference of climate of that part of the Peninsula.In Sicily, it abounds on the hills all along the coast, and ascends Mount Etnaas high as the Rocea dello Capre, which is 3200 ft. above the level of the sea,and within 800 ft. of the height to which Q. Cerris is found. {Comp, to Bot.A/«g.,i.p. 91.) Both in its native country, and in Britain, it grows remarkablywell close by the sea shore, where no other European oak will thrive.

History. This tree was well known to the ancients. Pliny mentions someholm oaks in existence when he wrote, which, according to his statement,must have then been, at the lowest computation, 1400 or 1500 years old.One tree, he says, grew in the Vatican, and was older than Rome itself. Ithad brazen letters, in the ancient Etruscan characters, fixed upon its trunk;from which it would appear, that, before the city was founded, or eventhe Roman name was known, this oak was a sacred tree. Three other ilexes,he records, were also then extant on the site of the ancient city of Tibur.The Tiburtines, he adds, were a more ancient people than the Romans, andtheir city, Tibur, was founded ages before Rome : yet these oaks were oldereven than Tiburtus, who built it; for tradition asserts that they were thesacred trees on which that hero beheld an omen, which he regarded as a warrantfrom the gods as to the spot on which to found his city. Now, Tiburtuswas the reputed son of Amphiaraus, who died at Thebes 100 years beforethe Trojan war; and how long these oaks outlived Pliny, who flourished inthe latter half of the first century of the Christian era, we have no record.(See Amcen. Quer., fol. 18.) The ilex is frequently mentioned by Virgil,who, in the third Georgic, introduces a whole grove of them : —

—— “ Aut sicubi nigrumIlicibus crebris sacra nemus accubet umbra.’*

He also mentions the acorns in the fourth Georgic, p. 81. Horace also speaksof the “ iligna nutritus glande.” (Lib. ii. sat. 4.1. 40.) Cato and Columellarecommend the leaves of the ilex as a litter for sheepcotes, when straw cannoteasily be procured; and Pliny states that the Romans sometimes made theircivic crowns of it. The earliest notice which we have of the Q. /Tex in Bri-tain is by Gerard, who, writing in 1597, says that “it is a stranger in England,notwithstanding there is here and there a tree thereof that hath been procuredfrom beyond the seas.” Johnson, in his edition of Gerard, published in 1636,says that Clusius, in 1581, “ observed two trees; one in a garden about the