io6 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



that acorns in early times formed a welcome diet, but we 

 must bear in mind an important point : that these venerable 

 authorities were Latins or Greeks, dwellers around the 

 Mediteranean, and that the acorns they referred to 

 were not those of the English Oak at all, but of South 

 European species that bear fruit at once nutritious and 

 inviting. The evergreen oak, d. ilex, abundant throughout 

 South Europe, bears a fruit that in flavour resembles a 

 nut. Another oak, also evergreen, the Q.. ballota, is almost 

 equally common, and yields an abundant supply of nutri- 

 tious acorns. During the Peninsular War both the French 

 and English soldiers found welcome subsistence on these 

 in the great woods round Salamanca and elsewhere. 



One of the most unpopular and vexatious acts of William 

 the Conqueror, in his passion for converting the great forest 

 tracts into his own hunting grounds, was the restriction 

 that was imposed on the keeping of hogs by the common 

 people, and this grievance sorely rankled until, in the 

 great explosion of wrath against King John that culminated 

 at Runnymede, these restrictions were greatly modified in 

 the great Charter of English liberty that he was there 

 compelled to sign. 



In Domesday Book the woodlands are valued not for 

 their timber — the time for that had not yet come — but by 

 the number of swine to which they would yield panage ; 

 and so closely was this calculated that we even find patches 

 of forest ground entered as " of one hog." The right 

 of turning out swine in the forest was of great value. 

 We find it in Saxon times often assigned as an endowment 

 to a monastery, and more than once it is the dowry of a 

 king's daughter. About the end of the seventh century. 



