CHAP. CV. CORYLA'cEiE. QUE'rCUS. 1721 



Bashan are mentioned as fit for rearing cattle and feeding swine (Numbers, 

 xxxii.) ; and it is supposed to have been iroin this district that the great herd 

 of swine were driven by our Saviour into tlie Sea of Gennesaretli. (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 /Mex ; 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. {Plintj Nut. 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." (Amcen. Quer. yfo\. 1.) 

 In the present day, the native oak of Tunis, Quercus pseiido-coccifera, 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 Choid Be 

 Var. Qiier. 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 Quercus Balldtd, 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 Ckenes.) 

 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 aftbrtl 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 Fhilosophical 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 oflfi 

 and 36 ft. in circumference at the lower end ; and, though but a fragment, 

 it measured 1-iOft. 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 

 possibly have remained there ever since the great battle fought in Hatfield 

 Forest, 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 Linnsus. The latter, in 

 his Species I'lanfiirum, ed. 3., published in 1744', described l+ species ; Will- 

 denow,in his edition of the same work, described 7 (i ; Pcrsooii, in the Syno^isis 



