1720 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 
soil more or less calcareous. No oak in the temperate climates is found of a 
large size at a great elevation above the level of the sea; or where the climate 
is very severe in spring. In the Himalayas, and in Mexico, oaks are found 
of large size on mountains; but then the climate, naturally hot, is only ren- 
dered temperate by elevation. All oaks whatever are impatient of spring frosts. 
History, The oak, from the earliest ages has been considered as one of the 
most important of forest trees. It is celebrated, Burnet observes, “ in story 
and in song, in the forest and in the field, and unrivalled in commerce and 
the arts.”” It was held sacred alike by the Hebrews, the Greeks, and Romans, 
and the ancient Britons and Gauls; and it was “ the fear of the superstitious 
for their oracle, at the same time that it was the resort of the hungry for their 
food.” The earliest histories that exist contain frequent references to this 
tree. The grove planted by Abraham, at Beersheba, was of adlun, which 
Hillier considers to have been Quércus £’sculus; and he translates the 
words elon Mamre (Gen., xviii. 1.) the oak grove of Mamre, instead of the 
plane or terebinthine tree, as elon or ailon is sometimes rendered. In the 
like manner, “ the plane of Moreh” (Gen., xii. 6.) is said to signify the oak 
of Moreh; and the plane of Mamre, wherever it occurs, the oak tree, or oak 
grove, of Mamre. (See Hierophyticon,&c.) According to Jewish traditions, the 
oak of Mamre (Gen., xviii. 1.), under which Abraham stood when the angels 
announced to him the birth of Isaac, long remained an object of vene- 
ration; and Bayle (Dict. Hist. et Crit.) says that it was still im existence in 
the reign of the emperor Constantine. This tree, or rather the grove of 
Mamre, is frequently alluded to in the Old Testament; and in Eusebius’s 
Life of Constantine we find the oaks of Mamre expressly mentioned, as a place 
where idolatry was committed by the Israelites, close to the tomb of Abraham, 
and where Constantine afterwards built a church. The first mention of 
the word oak in the English version of the Bible appears to be in Gen., 
xxxv. 8. : — “ But Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died, and she was buried beneath 
Bethel under an oak : and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth :” literally, 
the oak of weeping. Numerous other instances of the mention of oaks occur 
in the Holy Scriptures, particularly in the case of Absalom, whose hair was 
caught “ by the thick boughs of a great oak.” (Second Book of Sam., xviii. 9.) 
Joshua, before his death, made a solemn covenant with the people in 
Shechem, and, after writing it in the Book of the Law of God, “ took a great 
stone, and set it up there under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord,” 
as a witness unto them, lest they should deny God. (Joshua, xxiv. 26.) 
Among the Greeks, the Arcadians believed that the oak was the first created 
of trees, and that they were the first people; but, according to others, the 
oaks which produced the acorns first eaten by men grew on the banks of 
Achelous. Pelasgus taught the Greeks to eat acorns, as well as to build huts. 
The oak groves of Dodona, in Epirus, formed the most celebrated and most 
ancient oracle on record; and Pliny states that the oaks in the Forest of 
Hercynia were believed to be coeval with the world. Herodotus, and 
numerous other Greek writers, speak of celebrated oaks; and it was an oak 
that destroyed Milo of Croton. Pliny states that oaks still existed at the 
tomb of Ilus near Troy, which had been sown when that city. was first called 
Ilium. Socrates often swore by the oak; and the women of Priene, a mari- 
time city of Ionia, in matters of importance, took an oath by the gloomy oak, 
on account of a great battle that took place under an oak between the Prie- 
nians and other Ionians. On Mount Lyczus, in Arcadia, there was a temple of 
Jupiter with a fountain, into which the priest threw an oak branch, in times of 
drought, to produce rain. The Greeks had two remarkable sayings relative to 
this tree, one of which was the phrase ; “ I speak to the oak,” as a solemn asse« 
veration; and the other, “ Born of an oak,” applied to a foundling ; because, 
anciently, children, when the parents were unable to provide for them, were 
frequently exposed in the hollow of an oak tree. 
Frequent reference is made to the oak, by ancient writers, on account of 
the use made of the acorns in feeding swine. In the Bible, the woods of 
