12 



THE OAK. 



of the insect, and opens its tiny leaves prematurely, and as simple 

 brown scales. Least of all, but quite as pretty as the oak-apple itself, 

 are the " oak-spangles" strewed on the under-surface of the leaves, and 

 which bear, as just now said, no distant likeness to the circular mounds 

 of fructification of such ferns as the common golden-dotted polypody of 

 every hedgebank. A single oak-leaf, jewelled by these beautiful little 

 growths, and shown to an inexperienced observer, might and would be 

 taken for a genuine fern-frond, so strange is the similitude. But a near 

 view at once discloses the difference. While the spangle of the fern con- 

 sists of a heap of minute boxes of a rich gold-colour, every one of them 

 bursting when mature, and discharging innumerable atoms of "fern- 



Oak- Spangles. Ivy. 



seed," the spangle of the oak-leaf is a crowd of little greenish or reddish 

 hairs, and seems as if cut out of a piece of velvet such as might have 

 been worn by Titania. It consists, in fact, of the same kind of sub- 

 stance as the oak-apple, but disposed in a different form, the insect 

 that gave the impulse being a different one. Not the least extra- 

 ordinary fact in this strange history is, that out of the same material, 

 the simple sap of the tree, should arise things so unlike as the oalr- 

 apple and the oak- spangle, and that the difference should be referable 

 to the diverse influence of a couple of flies ! 



But it is in the plants that take up their residence on the oak that we 

 see its most beautiful occupants. First there is that glorious old evergreen 



