422 



HISTORY OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



tlie Gth of May tlie leaves will be quite out, and 

 remain until the autumnal frosts come on. Wlien 



lft\ 



the oak grows alone it is moderately low, 

 and its branches spreading. In this case the 

 timber is also said to be more compact and 

 stronger, and the crooked arms or branches bet- 

 ter suited for ship building. In thickly planted 

 groups the stems grow upwards, and often reach 

 the heiglit of forty to fifty feet without giving 

 off lateral branches, while the branches attain 

 a height equal to that of the trunk, thus form- 

 ing a tree of 100 feet in height. 



The wood of the oak, though full of minute 

 pores, forming to appearance a spungy net- work 

 (see Plate I., fig. 8.), is yet of great strength and 

 durability. Some timber may be harder, some 

 more difficult to rend or tear, and some less ca- 

 pable of being broken across; but none contains 

 all these qualities united in such a superior degree 

 as the oak ; hence its great use in ship building, 

 where all these requisites are demanded. The 

 oak is not so much used for ship-building as it 

 was formerly, having been in a great measure 

 superseded by fir, and latterly larch wood has 

 been much employed for this purpose. The 

 sailor will still, however, maintain that his 

 eliip is " heart of oak." The seed of the 

 oak, or acorn, is a well-known nut, contained 

 in, and partially covered by, the calyx of the 

 flower. Our rude ancestors are said to have fed 

 on them; and acorns are still used as food by the 

 peasantry in the south of Europe. Cervantes, 

 in his romance of Don Quixote, not only sets 

 them before the goat-herds as a dainty, but picks 

 out the choicest as a dessert for the Countess her- 

 self. The oaks with edible acorns are not, how- 

 ever, of the same species as the English oak. 

 The Italian oak, which Virgil represents as the 

 monarch of the forest, and of the elevation of 

 whose top, the stedfastness of whose roots, and 

 of whose triumph in its greenness over the lapse 

 of ages, he gives a splendid description in the 

 second book of his Georgics, bore fruit which 

 was used as food. The querctis ilex (the ever- 

 green oak), which is still common in Spain, in 



Italy, in Gi-eece, in Syria, in the south of France, 

 and on the shores of the MediteiTanean, bears a 

 fruit which, in its agreeable flavour, resembles 

 nuts. It is a slow-growing tree, and is always 

 found single, and not in clumps. There is an- 

 other evergreen oak, quercus hallota, very com- 

 mon in Spain and Barbary, of which the acorns 

 are most abundant and nutritive. During the 

 Peninsular war, the French armies were for- 

 tunate in finding subsistence upon the hallota 

 acorns in the woods of Salamanca. We are often 

 startled by the assertions of ancient writers, that 

 the acorn, in the early periods of society, formed 

 the principal food of mankind. Much of our 

 surprise would have ceased had we distinguished 

 between the common acorn and that of the ilex, 

 hallota, and esculus oaks. Some of the classic 

 authors speak of-the fatness of the primitive in- 

 habitants of Greece and southern Europe, who, 

 living in the forests which were planted by the 

 hand of nature, were supported almost wholly 

 upon the fruit of the oak. The Grecian poets 

 and historians called these people balanophagi 

 (eaters of acorns) ; but then the Greek word 

 balanos, which the Romans translated glaiia 

 (acorn), applied also to such fruits as dates, 

 nuts, beech-mast, and olives. These all contain 

 large quantities of oil, which renders them par- 

 ticularly nutritive. 



Whether the custom existed among the an- 

 cient Britons, or (as is more probable), was im- 

 ported by the Saxons, who came from the thick 

 oak forests of Germanj', it is<;ertain that, during 

 the time when they held sway in this country, 

 the fattening of hogs upon acorns m the forests 

 was accounted so important a branch of domes- 

 tic economy, that, at about the close of the 

 seventh century, king Ina enacted the panage 

 laws for its regulation. The fruit of the oak 

 then formed gifts to kings, and part of the dow- 

 ries of queens. So very important was it, in- 

 deed, that the failure of the acorn crop is re- 

 corded as one of the principal causes of famine. 

 One of the most vexatious acts of William the 

 Conqueror, in his passion for converting the 

 whole of the forests into hunting grounds, was 

 that of restricting the people from fattening their 

 hogs; and this restriction was one of the griev- 

 ances which king John was called upon to re- 

 dress at the triumph of Runnemede, where his 

 assembled subjects compelled him to sign Magna 

 Charta. It is to be observed that swine's flesli 

 was the principal food of most nations in the 

 earlier stages of civilization; and this is to be at- 

 tributed to the extreme rapidity with which the 

 hog species multiply. 



Up to a recent period, large droves of hogs 

 were fattened upon the acorns of the New Forest, 

 in Hampshire, under the guidance of swine-herds, 

 who collected the herds together every night h\ 

 the sound of a horn. At the prcseut time, tin 



