THE OAK AND CHESTNUT 131 



The relation of the various modern genera to one another and 

 to the ancestral Dryophyllum stock is shown in the accompany- 

 ing diagram. Space does not permit of a detailed discussion of 

 most of these genera even were such a treatment desirable, which 

 it is not, since Pasania and Castanopsis are unfamiliar to most of 

 my readers and are sort of alien immigrants from Asia that have 

 survived on our Pacific coast. 



THE OAK 



"Jove's own tree, 

 That holds the woods in awful sovereignty." 



— ^Virgil, Georgics. 



The oak has always been an object of veneration or of senti- 

 mental tradition by all of the seafaring nations of history with the 

 possible exception of the Phoenicians and the Norsemen. By the 

 Greeks it was believed to have been the first tree, and it was sacred 

 to Zeus. An oak had sheltered his cradle on Mount Lycaeus and 

 he was believed to haunt the sacred oak at Dodona. The oak 

 has also frequently been the object of worship of the various tree 

 worshipping cults of the Old World — the very name Druid is said 

 to have come from the root deru, the Celtic for oak. 



We read in the Old Testament that Jehovah appeared to Abra- 

 ham beneath the oak tree at Mamre in Hebron, and in later days 

 the natives built altars to the supposed Abraham's oak (terebinth) 

 which were eventually destroyed by order of the religious Constan- 

 tine, who caused a church to be erected to replace them. That 

 the earlier Hebrews were frequently tree worshippers is further 

 indicated in the story of Gideon: And it was under an oak which 

 was in Ophrah that the angel of the Lord came to Gideon and told 

 him that it was he who was to save Israel from the Midianites. 



In later days there was a great oak at Geismar in Hesse dedicated 

 to Jupiter and this was felled by order of Bonifacius, and a chapel 

 to Saint Peter was constructed of its timber. At Kildare in 

 Ireland, the name being derived from the Gaelic cilldara or church 

 of the oak, tradition has it that Saint Bridget built her church under 

 an oak tree. The oak and the mistletoe associated with it in 



