CHAP. CV. CORYLA‘CEZ, QUE’RCUS. 1901 
and downy. It seldom happens that more than one or two of these acorns 
arrive at perfection on one peduncle. Some trees of this species produce 
acorns which are sweet and eatable; others produce only such as are bitter. 
Both bitter and sweet acorns are sometimes found on the same tree : and this 
important difference in taste and quality is accompanied by no difference 
whatever in their external appearance. According to the observation of M. 
De la Peyrouse, the sweetest acorns are found on trees which grow in warm 
dry situations. In the climate of London, seedling plants grow with consi- 
derable rapidity ; attaining, in good loamy soil, from 15 ft. to 20 ft. in height 
in 10 years from the acorn. As they become larger, they grow slower; and, 
after they have attained the height of 30 ft. or 40 ft., they increase in width 
nearly as much as in height. The tree attains a great age, remaining ina 
growing state for several centuries. Bosc states that, when this species is cut 
down, it never grows up again as a tree, but forms a bush ; which corresponds 
very well with the habit and character of the plant: but art, in the case of this 
tree, as in that of every other that stoles, might, doubtless, form a tree from a 
shoot produced by a stool, by bestowing proper attention on the selecting of 
a leading shoot, and on its future pruning and management. 
Geography. The Quércus Ilex is a native of the south of Europe and the 
north of Africa, It is very common in Spain and Italy; and is indigenous, 
to France, as far north as Nantes and Angers. According to Bosc, it never 
grows in masses like forests ; but it is dispersed here and there among other 
trees, more especially on hilly grounds, and near the sea, Captain S. E. 
Cook says that it grows in the first, or low and humid, region of Spain ; and, 
alone, serves to indicate the difference of climate of that part of the Peninsula. 
In Sicily, it abounds on the hills all along the coast, and ascends Mount Etna 
as high as the Rocca dello Capre, which is 3200 ft. above the level of the sea, 
and within 800 ft. of the height to which Q. Cérris is found. (Comp. to Bot. 
Mag.,i.p. 91.) Both in its native country, and in Britain, it grows remarkably 
well close by the sea shore, where no other European oak will thrive. 
History. This tree was well known to the ancients. Pliny mentions some 
holm oaks in existence when he wrote, which, according to his statement, 
must have then been, at the lowest computation, 1400 or 1500 years old. 
One tree, he says, grew in the Vatican, and was older than Rome itself. It 
had brazen letters, in the ancient Etruscan characters, fixed upon its trunk ; 
from which it would appear, that, before the city was founded, or even 
the Roman name was known, this oak was a sacred tree. Three other ilexes, 
he records, were also then extant on the site of the ancient city of Tibur. 
The Tiburtines, he adds, were a more ancient people than the Romans, and 
their city, Tibur, was founded ages before Rome: yet these oaks were older 
even than Tiburtus, who built it; for tradition asserts that they were the 
sacred trees on which that hero beheld an omen, which he regarded as a warrant 
from the gods as to the spot on which to found his city. Now, Tiburtus 
was the reputed son of Amphiaraus, who died at Thebes 100 years before 
the Trojan war ; and how long these oaks outlived Pliny, who flourished in 
the latter half of the first century of the Christian era, we have no record. 
(See Amen. Quer., fol. 18.) The ilex is frequently mentioned by Virgil, 
who, in the third Georgic, introduces a whole grove of them : — 
— “ Aut sicubi nigrum 
llicibus crebris sacra nemus accubet umbra.”’ 
He also mentions the acorns in the fourth Georgic, p. 81. Horace also speaks 
of the “iligna nutritus glande.” (Lib. ii. sat. 4.1.40.) Cato and Columella 
recommend the leaves of the ilex as a litter for sheepcotes, when straw cannot 
easily be procured; and Pliny states that the Romans sometimes made their 
civic crowns of it. The earliest notice which we have of the Q. ‘lex in Bri- 
tain is by Gerard, who, writing in 1597, says that “it is a stranger in England, 
notwithstanding there is here and there a tree thereof that hath been procured 
from beyond the seas.” Johnson, in his edition of Gerard, published in 1636, 
says that Clusius, in 1581, “ observed two trees; one ina garden about the 
