THE OAK. 20 



AVestmoreland and Cumberland,' says, that ' birds are 

 natural planters of all sorts of trees, disseminating the 

 kernels upon the earth till they grow up to their natural 

 strength and perfection. He tells us that early one 

 morning he observed ' a great number of rooks very busy 

 at their work upon a declining ground of a mossy surface, 

 and that he went out of his waj^ on purpose to view their 

 labour. He then found that they were planting a grove 

 of Oaks. The manner of their planting was thus : they 

 first made little holes in the earth with their bills, going 

 about and about till the hole was deep enough, and 

 then they dropped in the acorn, and covered it with earth 

 and moss. The young plantation,' Mr. Eobinson adds, ' is 

 now growing up to a thick grove of Oaks, fit for use, and 

 of height for the rooks to build their nests in. The season 

 was the latter end of autumn, Avhen all seeds are fully 

 ripe.' " ^ 



But the use of this fruit as an article of food is not 

 confined to the inferior animals : even man has conde- 

 scended to submit to the same humble fare, and among the 

 rest our own progenitors. " The earliest notices which 

 we have of the Oak in Britain are in the Saxon Chronicle, 

 from which it appears that Oak forests were chiefly valued 

 for the acorns which they produced, which were generally 

 consumed by swine and other domestic animals, but, in 

 years of great scarcity, were eaten by man. ' Famines,' 

 Burnet observes, ' which of old so continually occurred, 

 history in part attributes to the failure of these crops. 

 Long after the introduction of wheat and oats and rye 

 — nay, little more than seven hundred years since, when 

 other food had in a great measure superseded the use of 

 mast — considerable reliance was still placed thereon, and 

 Oaks were chiefly valued for the acorns they produced. 

 In the Saxon Chronicle, that year of terrible dearth and 

 mortality, 1116, is described as ' a very heavy-timed, 



^ Jesse's Gleanings in Natural History. 

 C 



