in. 7 HE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 47 



in this respect it is well chosen as the badge of 

 England, which has the proud distinction of affording a 

 refuge to every political outcast and victim of ecclesi- 

 astical tyranny throughout the world, and fosters by its 

 love of freedom and constitutional government every 

 type and variety of human life. A whole book might 

 easily be written upon the multitude of living things 

 that obtain food and shelter from the oak. The 

 natural history of its inmates and boarders is like that 

 of a garden or, indeed, a county. Some creatures are 

 peculiar to it, and find their home nowhere else ; and 

 to many more that are free to come and go, it extends 

 a kindly welcome. Were it to perish altogether from 

 off the face of the earth, many insects and plants would 

 disappear utterly. The insect population alone of the 

 oak tree, including beetles, butterflies, and a great 

 variety of tiny creeping things which none but a 

 naturalist cares for, or is aware of, would furnish 

 materials for study of a most interesting and absorbing 

 kind for many summer weeks together. When we do 

 not see themselves, we see the evidence of the exist- 

 ence and working of the insects in the great variety of 

 curious galls which they produce upon the trunk and 

 branches : oak-apples that hang on the twigs like some 

 mysterious unknown fruit, and are as wondrously 

 fashioned, although excrescences and abortions of the 

 vital sap, as the legitimate acorn cups and eggs them- 

 selves ; and beautiful golden-brown spangles that crowd 

 all the under-surface of the withering leaves in autumn 

 like the seeds, or the " fairy's money " as it is called, 



