108 TANNING. GALLS. INK. 



ferent shades of brown and drab colour. The bark 

 of the tree is universally employed for tanning 

 leather ; and the acorns or fruit which enclose the 

 seed, for fattening deer and pigs. The Oak is a 

 very long lived tree ; it is at least one hundred 

 years attaining its utmost perfection : it continues 

 vigorous for perhaps a hundred more, and then 

 begins to decay. At Calthorpe, near Wetherby, 

 in Yorkshire, there is an oak which measures 

 seventy-eight feet in circumference close to the 

 ground, and forty-eight feet at the height of a 

 yard. It began to decline, it is said, in the reign 

 of Queen Elizabeth ; and though now much de- 

 cayed, is still likely to stand for many years. 



The light spongy bodies about the size of 

 walnuts, called oak-apples, which you have often 

 seen, are excrescences that grow from the leaves 

 and other tender parts of the oak, when wounded 

 by insects in depositing their eggs : they are called 

 also Galls ; and there are several different kinds, 

 produced by the wounds made by different insects. 

 Some of them are very useful in dyeing black, and 

 the common gall is an essential ingredient in the 

 ink that we write with. It is extremely bitter and 

 astringent ; but the galls of the Sal'via pomif era, 

 Apple-bearing Sage, a plant in the class Diandria 

 and order Monogynia, are said to be of a very 

 pleasant flavour, and are considered as a great 

 delicacy in eastern countries. 



