THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 511 



time the celebrated olive-tree which Minerva caused to 

 spring from the ground at the epoch of the foundation of 

 the city of Cecrops was still to be seen in the citadel of 

 Athens. 



The ancient races, struck with the noble aspect of our 

 oaks, have in all ages enveloped them in the clouds of their 

 legends, and carried them back to the remotest antiquity. 

 Of this class was the mighty holm-oak, which in the days 

 of Pliny still existed near Rome, on the trunk of which 

 there was an Etruscan inscription in letters of brass, stating 

 that before the existence of the Eternal City it was already 

 the object of popular veneration. The Roman naturalist 

 also asserts that in the environs of Heraclea, in the king- 

 dom of Pontus, there was a tradition that two oaks which 

 overshadowed the altar of Jupiter Stragius had been planted 

 by Hercules. 1 



The origin of certain trees is lost in even more remote 

 antiquity. 



The imposing terror of the Hercynian Forest has deeply 

 impressed all those who have described Germany, and Pliny 

 and Tacitus especially. The aged oaks of its sombre vales, 

 where wandered the elk and the aurochs, especially aroused 

 the admiration of the Roman historian ; he cannot refrain 

 from speaking of them in the most lofty terms. " The ma- 



1 In the Crimea some trees are met with which possess a certain amount of ce- 

 lebrity. The chief one is a nut-tree in a plain near Balaklava, at the spot where 

 stood the temple of Iphigenia in Tauris. It is considered to have been in exist- 

 ence at the time when the Greek colonies exported their nuts to Rome, and that 

 its age dates back several thousand years. At present its fertility is so great that 

 it bears every year as many as 100,000 nuts, which are shared without any jarring 

 among five Tartar families, to whom it belongs. 



