1206 QUERCUS. [CLASS XXI. ORDER VIF, 
flowers are very similar, and the fertile ones are the most charac- 
teristic mark of distinction between the species; they are mostly 
several clustered together, and are sessile, or on very short stalks. In 
the fruit there is no distinction. 
Habitat.—W oods and hedges ; common. 
Tree ; flowering in April and May. 
The leaves of both species vary in their form, in being more or less 
elongated, and deep or slightly sinuated, and smooth, or clothed with 
fine pubescence; but their accidental varieties are rare, and mostly 
produced by cultivation. The two species are so nearly alike in their 
general appearance and character, that we shall speak of them and 
Oaks generally in the following remarks indiscriminately. 
Perhaps of all the trees of the forest there is none that can be com- 
pared with the Oak, either for historical associations or usefulness. 
Few persons can see one of these noble trees, impressed with the 
venerable characters of antiquity, spreading wide its wreathed and 
contorted branches, with its sturdy majestic port, having withstood 
the chilling blasts and raging elements for centuries, without feeling 
a respect and veneration for the Monarch of the Forest. 
The earliest records of the history of mankind are associated with 
trees The patriarch Abraham, about 1898 years before the birth of 
Christ, fed the Angels who visited him beneath the shade of a tree, 
which, if we might believe Hillier, was an Oak; and according to 
the traditions of the Jews, this Oak tree of Mamre long remained an 
object of veneration to them; and Eusebius, in his Life of Con- 
stantine, states that the Oaks of Mamre is a place where the Israelites 
committed idolatry, close to the tomb of Abraham, and as the place 
where Constantine afterwards built a Church, about 330 years after 
the birth of Christ. Besides this, many remarkable events are re- 
corded in the Holy Writ, as having taken place under the shade of 
the Oak. Jacob, in quitting Shalem for Beth-el, collected all the 
strange gods and ear-rings amongst his people, and “ hid them under 
the Oak, which was by Shechem,” Gen. xxxv. 4. Saul and his sons 
were buried “ under the Oak in Jabesh,” 1 Chron. x. 12. The book 
of the law of God was set upon a great stone by Joshua, “under an 
Oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord," Joshua xxiv. 26; and 
the stone was a witness unto them, lest they should deny their God; 
but in the Prophet Ezekiel vi. 13, we learn that all witnesses and 
warnings were in vain, and in consequence of their disobedience, the 
Lord accomplishes his fury upon them, and says, “ Then shall ye 
know that I am the Lord, when their slain men shall be among their 
idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of 
the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick 
Oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols.” 
And Zechariah xi. 2. “‘ Howl, fir tree; for the cedar is fallen, because 
the mighty are spoiled: how], O ye Oaks of Bashan, for the forest of 
we 
