CHAP, CV. CORYLA‘CEE. QUE’RCUS. 1721 
Bashan are mentioned as fit for rearing cattle and feeding swine (Numbers, 
xxxii.); and it is supposed to have been from this district that the great herd 
of swine were driven by our Saviour into the Sea of Gennesareth. (Spreng. 
Spec. Bot. Ant., 17.) The Romans used acorns for the same purpose. In 
Strabo’s time, Rome was chiefly supplied with hogs which were fattened on 
mast in the woods of Gaul. This mast is supposed to have been the acorns 
of the common and the Turkey oaks, and of the ‘lex ; but the word mast is 
supposed by Burnet, in this case, to have included the mast of the beech, and 
the nuts of the chestnut. Many laws were anciently enacted relatively to 
acorns. The Romans expressly provided by the laws of the Twelve Tables, 
that the owner of a tree might gather up his acorns, though they should have 
fallen on another man’s ground. (Pliny Nat. Hist., xvi. 6.) In more modern 
times, acorns appear to have been used as a common food for man, as well as 
for swine. “ Little as we now depend for sustenance on the fruits of our forest 
trees,” Burnet observes, “ and great as is the value of their wood, the reverse 
was formerly the case: oak corn, that is, ac-cern, or acorns, some centuries 
ago, formed an important food both for man and beast.” (Amen. Quer., fol. 1.) 
In the present day, the native oak of Tunis, Quércus psetido-coceffera, is called 
the meal-bearing tree; probably, as Smith observes, from the use of the acorns 
as food; and F. A. Michaux mentions that the American Indians obtain an oil 
from the acorns of the live oak, which they use in cookery. Pliny tells us 
that, in his time, acorns formed the chief wealth of many nations ; and that, 
in time of scarcity, mast was sometimes ground into meal, tempered with 
water, and made into bread. He also informs us that, in Spain, acorns were 
then brought to table to eat ; and Strabo states that, in the mountainous parts 
of that country, the inhabitants ground their acorns into meal. (See Choul De 
Var. Quer. Hist.) During the war in the Peninsula, both the natives and the 
French frequently fed on the acorns met with in the woods of Portugal and 
Spain. The numerous herds of swine, which still constitute the chief terri- 
torial riches of Spain, are fed, Captain S, E. Cook informs us, on the acorns of 
the evergreen oaks, which abound in almost every part of the country. In the 
Morea and Asia Minor, acorns are still sold as food. Desfontaines seems to 
have relished those of the Quércus Ballota, which are sold in the public mar- 
kets of Morocco and Algiers, and eaten by the Moors, both raw and roasted. 
Michaux ate acorns in Bagdad, and speaks with particular praise of those 
which grow in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, which, he says, are as long as the 
finger. He also ate and relished the acorns of Spain. (Michx. Hist. des Chénes.) 
The antiquity of oak forests is attested by the numerous trees which have 
been dug out of bogs, or raised up from the beds of rivers, after having lain 
there apparently for many centuries. Fossil oaks, which are particularly 
abundant in the Isle of Portland, in the limestone known as Portland stone, 
and of which there is a fine specimen in the front of the magnificent conser- 
vatory at Syon House, also afford proof of the great antiquity of this 
tree. An immense fossil oak was raised from the neighbourhood of the 
salt pits in Transylvania, in which the woody matter appeared to have been 
in great part converted into hard salt. Abundance of subterranean oaks 
have been dug up in Pembrokeshire; and, in the Philosophical Transactions, 
an enormous oak is said to have been discovered in Hatfield Bog in York- 
shire, which was 18 ft. in circumference at the upper end where broken off, 
and 36 ft. in circumference at the lower end; and, though but a fragment, 
it measured 120 ft. in length. The timber was perfectly sound; though, 
from some of the coins of the Emperor Vespasian being found in the bog 
near it, it is conjectured to have lain there above a thousand years, and may 
one ty have remained there ever since the great battle fought in Hatfield 
orest, between Ostorius and Caractacus, a. D. 52. 
The botanical History of the oak may be considered as commencing with 
the time of Bauhin, who described more sorts than Linnzus. The latter, in 
his Species Plantarum, ed. 3., published in 1744, described 14 species ; Will- 
denow, in his edition of the same work, described 76; Persoon, in the Synopsis 
