OAK loi 



Other, but protracted experiment showed that there was 

 nothing to choose between the two, the more or less 

 of excellence depending really upon soil, locality, and 

 other considerations quite outside the presence or absence 

 of a leaf or acorn stem. 



The name duercus is open to more than one explanation. 

 That this should be the Latin word for an oak-tree 

 would seem sufficiently to account for its present employ- 

 ment, but some .would tell us that the name is derived 

 from the Celtic words quer, beautiful, and cuez, a tree. 

 In the Gaelic tongue the oak was called Vara^/z, and in 

 Greek dras. From this latter is derived the word dryad, 

 and some would venture to find also in 'it a justification for 

 druid. The Celtic word, however, for the oak being derw, 

 we find a fairly reasonable derivation without wandering 

 so far afield as Athens in search of it. The specific name 

 is the Latin robur, signifying strength, while our popular 

 name oak descends to us from Anglo-Saxon times, when 

 our tree was the ac. 



The curiously waved outline of the oak-leaf is 

 indicated in our drawing. In the Spring the foliage is of 

 a rich red colour that presently merges into], green, and is 

 again transformed, as Autumn advances, into a rusty brown. 

 These brown and curled-up leaves often remain on the 

 tree until dispossessed in the Spring by the new growth. 

 The flowers of the oak are, as in most forest trees, very 

 inconspicuous. We have already had in our pages more 

 than one example — the hop, for instance — of the male 

 flowers being found on one plant, and the female on 

 another, the arrangement known botanically as dicecious, 

 but in others the pistillate and the staminate flowers. 



