II. 1. THE OAK. 115 



one or several ovules, only one of which comes to maturity. 

 The fruit is a bony or leathery, one-celled nut, partially or 

 entirely enclosed in a cup. It contains one, two, or three pen- 

 dulous seeds. The embryo is large, the cotyledons being the 

 halves of the fleshy fruit. The radicle, or future root, is mi- 

 nute, situated at the top of the nut, and, in germination, is the 

 first to make its appearance.* 



The genera found in Massachusetts, are the oak, the chest- 

 nut, the hazel, and the beech. 



II. 1. The Oak. Quercus. L. 



" The TJnwedgeable and Gnarled Oak.' : 



By the Pelasgians, who, before the Greeks, occupied the land 

 afterwards so illustrious for the arts and civilization of its in- 

 habitants, and by the fathers of our Celtic ancestors, the oak 

 was invested with a sacred character. In the oak woods, which 

 gave him shelter and food, the Pelasgian believed there dwelt a 

 deity, whom, in the awful solitude, he feared and worshipped. 

 There were never wanting some to avail themselves of this 

 superstition, and from the oak trees of Dodona came an oracular 

 voice which was listened to with a faith which accomplished 

 its predictions. Still more sacred was the oak to the inhabit- 

 ants of Britain and Gaul under the Druids. f The oak groves 

 were their temples, and the mistletoe which grew on the oak, an 

 object of still greater veneration, was the wand of the druid. 

 This, like every other superstition, must have had its origin in 

 reason. And for what better foundation need we look, than the 

 majesty, the durableness, the beauty, and the many useful pro- 

 perties of the oak ? 



Among the earliest inhabitants of Europe, with whom most 

 of the fruits now used were not indigenous, the acorn was an 



"o v 



* The cup of the acorn is an involucre, formed by the growing together of a 

 great number of little bracts; and the acorn is a fruit formed by the adhesion of 

 an ovary to the calyx. One of the ovules increases rapidly after its fecundation, 

 and renders the others abortive, either by attracting the sap or by obliterating the 

 threads of the pistillate cord. 



f The name druid is supposed to be derived from a Celtic word, drys, which, 

 like the corresponding word drus, (Sqvg), in Greek, signifies oak. 



