1722

AltBOKETUM AND VRUTICETUM.

PART III,

Plantarum, 82; and about the same, number are described in the NouveauDu Hamel , and by Smith in the article Quercus in Rees’s Cyclopaedia. Ac-cording to the Dictionnaire Classique d’Histoire Naturelle, the total number ofspecies described by botanists up to 1823 was 130; of which one half belongedto America, and of these upwards of 40 to the United States. Humboldt and Bonpland collected 24 species in Mexico ; Dr. Wallich and Dr. Roylehave found nearly half that number in the temperate regions of India ; andBlume found 16 species in Java. If, therefore, we take the number of oakswhich have been described by botanists at 150, we shall probably not be farfrom the truth. Of these, the number indigenous to, or introduced into,Britain is, according to our Hortus Britannicus, 62; so that there remainto be introduced nearly 100 sorts. When it is considered that all the oakfamily are decidedly trees of temperate regions, and would probably all livein the open air in the climate of London , their introduction seems one ofthe most desirable objects of arboricultural exertion.

The economical History of the European oaks may date from the days ofTheophrastus and Pliny ; the importance of the genus, and the various uses towhich the different species are applied, having been treated of in every work onplanting or forest culture since the time of the Greek naturalist. Secondat ,in his Mem. sur l'Hist. Nat. du Chene , published in 1785, was the first writerwho showed the different qualities of the wood of Q. pedunculata, Q. sessili-flora, and Q. Tauzin; he also made various experiments to ascertain thestrength of the different kinds of oak wood ; and endeavoured to prove thatQ. sessilifldra was the Q. Rohuv of the ancients. Fougeroux and Daubenton,both professors, and members of the Academie Roy ale des Sciences, firstpointed out the common error in considering the wood of Q. sessiliflora, whichis common in the old ecclesiastical buildings in France , as the chestnut. (SeeMem. de l’Acad, des Scien. for 1781, p. 49. and p. 295. The first work onthe American oaks which treated of the uses of the timber was that of theelder Michaux, entitled Histoire des Chines de VAmerique, published in 1801;and the best modern account of them is in the North American Sylva of hisson, in 3 volumes, 8vo, the English edition of which was published in 1819.Bose has also published what may be called the popular and economical historyof the oak, which is entitled, Memoires sur les differentes Especes de Chenequi croissent en France , et sur ces E'trangers a VEmpire qui se cullivent dansles Jardins et Pepinieres des Environs des Paris, &c., in the Mem. de I’Instit.National de France , \ a Semestre, for 1807, p. 307. In this work 50 speciesare described, of which 14 are considered natives of France . The RecherchesHistoriques sur les Chines, and the Essai sur les Harmonies Vegetales etAnimates du Chine, both by Marquis, contain some curious information onthe subject. The elder Michaux’s work has been translated, and someadditions made to it, by Dr. Wade, in his Quercus , published in 1809. It isremarkable, that, in Martyn’s edition of Miller’s Dictionary, the part of whichtreating of Quercus was published in 1807, no notice whatever is taken ofthe oaks of America , except those which had been described in the HortusKewensis, though Michaux’s Histoire des Chines, &c., was published six yearsbefore. The Amcenitates Quercinem, by the late Professor Burnet, publishedin Nos. 5. and 6. of Burgess’s Eidodendron, 1833, and which occupies 25 foliosof the immense pages of that work, is one of the latest essays on the subject,and, like all works that have been written by that learned author, is a very curi-ous and elaborate production, though not so well known as it deserves to be.

Poetical and mythological Allusions. The oak was dedicated by the ancientsto Jupiter, because it was said that an oak tree sheltered that god at his birth,on Mount Lycacus, in Arcadia; and there is scarcely a Greek or Latin poet,or prose author, who does not make some allusion to this tree. Herodotus first mentions the sacred forest of Dodona (ii. c. 57.), and relates the traditionshe heard respecting it from the priests of Egypt . Two black doves, he says,took their flight from the city of Thebes , one of which flew to the temple oJupiter Ammon, and the other to Dodona ; where, with a human voice, i