1722 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART If. 
Plantarum, 82; and about the same number are described in the Nouveau 
Du Hamel, and by Smith in the article Quércus in Rees’s Cyclopedia. Ac- 
cording to the Dictionnaire Classique d Histoire Naturelle, the total number of 
species described by botanists up to 1823 was 130; of which one half belonged 
to America, and of these upwards of 40 to the United States. Humboldt 
and Bonpland collected 24 species in Mexico; Dr. Wallich and Dr. Royle 
have found nearly half that number in the temperate regions of India; and 
Blume found 16 species in Java. If, therefore, we take the number of oaks 
which have been described by botanists at 150, we shall probably not be far 
from the truth. Of these, the number indigenous to, or introduced into, 
Britain is, according to our Hortus Britannicus, 62: so that there remain 
to be introduced nearly 100 sorts. When it is considered that all the oak 
family are decidedly trees of temperate regious, and would probably all live 
in the open air in the climate of London, their introduction seems one of 
the most desirable objects of arboricultural exertion. 
The economical History of the European oaks may date from the days of 
Theophrastus and Pliny ; the importance of the genus, and the various uses to 
which the different species are applied, having been treated of in every work on 
planting or forest culture since the time of the Greek naturalist. Secondat, 
in his Mém. sur l’ Hist. Nat. du Chéne, published in 1785, was the first writer 
who showed the different qualities of the wood of Q. pedunculata, Q. sessili- 
flora, and Q. Taizin; he also made various experiments to ascertain the 
strength of the different kinds of oak wood ; and endeavoured to prove that 
Q. sessiliflora was the Q. Robur of the ancients. Fougeroux and Daubenton, 
both professors, and members of the Académie Royale des Sciences, first 
pointed out the common error in considering the wood of Q. sessiliflora, which 
is common in the old ecclesiastical buildings in France, as the chestnut. (See 
Mém. de 0 Acad. des Scien. for 1781, p. 49. and p. 295. The first work on 
the American oaks which treated of the uses of the timber was that of the 
elder Michaux, entitled Histoire des Chénes de 0 Amerique, published in 1801; 
and the best modern account of them is in the North American Sylva of his 
son, in 3 volumes, 8vo, the English edition of which was published in 1819. 
Bosc has also published what may be called the popular and economical history 
of the oak, which is entitled, Mémoires sur les différentes Espéces de Chéne 
qui. croissent en France, et sur ces E’trangers a ? Empire qui se_cultivent dans 
les Jardins et Pépiniéres des Environs des Paris, &c.,in the Mém. de ? Instit. 
National de France, \** Semestre, for 1807, p. 307. In this work 50 species 
are described, of which 14 are considered natives of France. “The Recherches 
Historiques sur les Chénes, and the Essai sur les Harmonies Végétales et 
Animales du Chéne, both by Marquis, contain some curious information on 
the subject. The elder Michaux’s work has been translated, and some 
additions made to it, by Dr. Wade, in his Quercus, published in 1809. It is 
remarkable, that, in Martyn’s edition of Miller’s Dictionary, the part of which 
treating of Quércus was published in 1807, no notice whatever is taken of 
the oaks of America, except those which had been described in the Hortus 
Kewensis, though Michaux’s Histoire des Chénes, &c., was published six years 
before. The Ameenitates Quercinee, by the late Professor Burnet, published 
in Nos. 5. and 6, of Burgess’s Eidodendron, 1833, and which occupies 25 folios 
of the immense pages of that work, is one of the latest essays on the subject, 
and, like all works that have been written by that learned author, is a very curi- 
ous and elaborate production, though not so well known as it deserves to be. 
Poetical and mythological Allusions. The oak was dedicated by the ancients 
to Jupiter, because it was said that an oak tree sheltered that god at his birth, 
on Mount Lyceeus, in Arcadia; and there is scarcely a Greek or Latin poet, 
or prose author, who does not make some allusion to this tree. Herodotus 
first mentions the sacred forest of Dodona (ii. c. 57.), and relates the traditions 
he heard respecting it from the priests of Egypt. Two black doves, he says, 
took their flight from the city of Thebes, one of which flew to the temple of 
Jupiter Anmon, and the other to Dodona; where, with a human voice, it 
