CHAP. cv. CORYLA X CE;E. QUE'RCUS. 1901 



and downy. It seldom happens that more than one or two of these acorns 

 arrive at perfection on one peduncle. Some trees of this species produce 

 acorns which are sweet and eatable; others produce only such as are bitter. 

 Both bitter and sweet acorns are sometimes found on the same tree : and this 

 important difference in taste and quality is accompanied by no difference 

 whatever in their external appearance. According to the observation of M. 

 De la Peyrouse, the sweetest acorns are found on trees which grow in warm 

 dry situations. In the climate of London, seedling plants grow with consi- 

 derable rapidity; attaining, in good loamy soil, from 15ft. to 20ft. in height 

 in 10 years from the acorn. As they become larger, they grow slower; and, 

 after they have attained the height of 30 ft. or 40 ft., they increase in width 

 nearly as much as in height. The tree attains a great age, remaining in a 

 growing state for several centuries. Bosc states that, when this species is cut 

 down, it never grows up again as a tree, but forms a bush ; which corresponds 

 very well with the habit and character of the plant : but art, in the case of this 

 tree, as in that of every other that stoles, might, doubtless, form a tree from a 

 shoot produced by a stool, by bestowing proper attention on the selecting of 

 a leading shoot, and on its future pruning and management. 



Geography. The (^uercus /Mex is a native of the south of Europe and the 

 north of Africa. It is very common in Spain and Italy; and is indigenous, 

 to France, as far north as Nantes and Angers. According to Bosc, it never 

 grows in masses like forests ; but it is dispersed here and there among other 

 trees, more especially on hilly grounds, and near the sea. Captain S. E. 

 Cook says that it grows in the first, or low and humid, region of Spain ; and, 

 alone, serves to indicate the difference of climate of that part of the Peninsula. 

 In Sicily, it abounds on the hills all along the coast, and ascends Mount Etna 

 as high as the Rocca dello Capre, which is 3200 ft. above the level of the sea, 

 and within 800ft. of the height to which Q. C'erris is found. (Comp. to Bot. 

 Mag., i. p. 91.) Both in its native country, and in Britain, it grows remarkably 

 well close by the sea shore, where no other European oak will thrive. 



History. This tree was well known to the ancients. Pliny mentions some 

 holm oaks in existence when he wrote, which, according to his statement, 

 must have then been, at the lowest computation, 1400 or 1500 years old. 

 One tree, he says, grew in the Vatican, and was older than Rome itself. It 

 had brazen letters, in the ancient Etruscan ^characters, fixed upon its trunk ; 

 from which it would appear, that, before* the city was founded, or even 

 the Roman name was known, this oak was a sacred tree. Three other ilexes, 

 he records, were also then extant on the site of the ancient city of Tibur. 

 The Tiburtines, he adds, were a more ancient people than the Romans, and 

 their city, Tibur, was founded ages before Rome : yet these oaks were older 

 even than Tiburtus, who built it ; for tradition asserts that they were the 

 sacred trees on which that hero beheld an omen, which he regarded as a warrant 

 from the gods as to the spot on which to found his city. Now, Tiburtus 

 was the reputed son of Amphiaraus, who died at Thebes 100 years before 

 the Trojan war ; and how long these oaks outlived Pliny, who flourished in 

 the latter half of the first century of the Christian era, we have no record. 

 (See Anucn. Quer., fol. 18.) The ilex is frequently mentioned by Virgil, 

 who, in the third Gcorgic, introduces a whole grove of them : 



" Aut sicubi nigrum 



Ilicibus crebris sacra nemus accubet umbrd." 



He also mentions the acorns in the fourth Georgic, p. 81. Horace also speaks 

 of the"iligna nutritus glande." (Lib. ii. sat. 4/1. 40.) Cato and Columella 

 recommend the leaves of the ilex as a litter for sheepcotes, when straw cannot 

 easily be procured ; and Pliny states that the Romans sometimes made their 

 civic crowns of it. The earliest notice which we have of the Q. 7 v lex in Bri- 

 tain is by Gerard, who, writing in 1597, says that "it is a stranger in England, 

 notwithstanding there is here and there a tree thereof that hath been procured 

 from beyond the seas." Johnson, in his edition of Gerard, published in 1C36, 

 says that Clusius, in 1581, " observed two trees; one in a garden about the 



