66 ERYTHEA. 



important tree in the entire silva of the region, through 

 unnumbered generations of their never-to-be-written history. 

 Its fructification supplied them with bread. Its acorns are 

 the largest borne by any oak known to botanists; are pro- 

 duced in prodigal abundance; and, while the kernel in its 

 crude state has some astringent and otherwise unpalatable 

 and perhaps unwholesome qualities, the Indians, by a few sim- 

 ple arts, managed to dispel these contituents, so transforming 

 these large acorns into something perhaps scarcely less 

 agreeable or wholesome than chestnuts. The close relation 

 between the white oaks and the chestnut trees is known to 

 all botanists; and some Mexican species of oak yield 

 acorns so much like chestnuts in the absence of all unpleas- 

 antness of flavor that, like them, they find their place, and a 

 ready sale in village market-places. It is then easy to 

 believe that the food which the oak-groves yielded to the 

 savage populace may have been not only nutritious but 

 palatable; and that it should have continued in use, as it has 

 said to have done, long after the early days of wheat-growing 

 in California; and that even some late remnants of the 

 aboriginal tribes should have been known to prefer the 

 aboriginal acorn-cake to the loaf made from the best wheat 



flour. 



Thus far I have spoken of only two out of eighteen or 



twenty Californian species of oak. But these two are they 

 which have had the most extended period of botanical his- 

 tory* They both became known to botanists more than a 

 hundred years since. They were first on the list of dendro- 

 logical discovery because they were large trees growing near 

 the seaboard; and a mighty interval of years elapsed before 

 another one of our eighteen or twenty oak-species was 



entered on the list. 



The work which the Spanish botanists began along this 

 line was not resumed until forty years afterwards, when 

 David Douglas landed on the same shore, rediscovered Q. 

 agrifolia and lohata^ and, proceeding further inland, added 

 O, densifiora and Douglasii to the list; and then, on the 



