THE EVERGEEEN OAK. .41 



The Ilex was introduced into England previously to 

 1580 ; but it was then a great rarity, and little thought of. 

 In Italy it is the prevailing evergreen, and in Sicily it 

 abounds on the hills and all along the coast, ascending 

 Mount Etna to an elevation of 3,200 feet. It is easily 

 propagated from the acorn, but is very impatient of being- 

 transplanted, owing to its sending its long roots perpen- 

 dicularly downwards, which are furnished with but few 

 rootlets, save at the extremities, and if these are injured 

 the young plant dies. This difficulty is obviated by sowing 

 the acorns either in the spot where the trees are destined 

 to stand, or by confining their roots in pots until they are 

 required for planting. During their early stage they grow 

 with considerable rapidity, but afterwards much more 

 slowly. The bark is even and of a light colour ; the leaves 

 are of a dark bluish green above, and more or less downy 

 beneath, the younger shoots being as remarkable for their 

 light hue as the full-grown tree is for the characteristic 

 sombreness of its foliage. The shape of the leaf varies 

 greatly in different individuals, and even not \infrequently 

 on the same tree, being sometimes scarcely notched at all, 

 at other times deeply serrated, and at others quite prickly. 

 It is this last variety which has procured for it the name of 

 "Holm-Oak." It also resembles the Holm or Holly-tree, 

 in having its most prickly leaves on the lowest branches. 

 The acorn, which does not arrive at perfection until the 

 second year, resembles that of the Oak, but is somewhat 

 more slender, and the cup is scaly. Some trees bear sweet 

 and edible acorns ; those produced by others are bitter, and 

 both kinds are sometimes to be found on the same tree. 

 An allied species, Quercus gramuntia, which is so like the 

 Ilex as to have been thought formerly merely a variety of 

 the same tree, bears acorns, which even in perfection are as 

 good as a chestnut, or even superior to it. These, accord- 

 ing to Capt. S. C. Cook, are "the edible acorns of the 

 ancients, which they believed fattened the tunny fish on 

 their passage from the ocean to the Mediterranean ; a fable, 



