CHAPTER II 



The Trees of the Forest — The Monarch Oak — Acorns as Food — Oak-mast 

 for the Pigs — Panage in Domesday Book — Oak Galls of various kinds 

 — The Beech — St. Leonard's Forest Experiences — Name-carving — Beech- 

 mast — The Hornbeam— The Scotch Fir, or Pine — Its Mountain Home — 

 Cones, Pine-apples — The Larch^Planted by the Million — Spanish 

 Chestnut — As an Article of Food — Abnormal Cluster — The Horse- 

 Chestnut — A Central Asian Tree — The Birch — The Lady of the Woods 

 — Greenland's one Tree — Its Silvery Bark — The Books of Numa — 

 Witches' Knots — Attraction of Sap to Butterflies — The Birchen-rod — The 

 " Village Schoolmistress " — ^The Ash — The "Venus of the Woods " — The 

 Husbandman's Tree — Elizabethan Statute for the Preservation of Timber 

 — Ash-keys — Peter-keys — Norden on Sussex Iron-furnaces — Shrew-ash 

 — The Serpent's Antipathy — The Rowan, or Mountain Ash — Difference 

 of Opinion on Floral Odours — The Witchen-tree — Preservative from 

 the Evil Eye— The Service-tree — Service-berries as Food — The Sycamore 

 — The Biblical Sycamore — The Great Maple — The False Plane — 

 Sycamore-wine — Fungoid Growth on the Leaves — Winged Fruits — 

 Distribution of Seeds of the Sycamore — The Maple — Maser-tree — The 

 Plane — Its peeling Bark — A Town-tree — Irrigation with Wine — The 

 Holly — The Saturnalia again — Tunbridge Ware — The Flail — The City 

 of Tibur — " As Pliny saith " — Bird-lime. 



OAK (QuERcus Robur) 



WE propose in the present chapter to deal more 

 especially with the trees of the forest. Amongst 

 these one stands pre-eminent, and in unchallenged 

 supremacy, the Oak. In its massive strength, in its 

 endurance, in its picturesque grandeur, in the magnitude 

 it attains to, in its association with our island story, 

 beneath its sacred shade the home of Druidic worship, 



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