156 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
There is the small round currant gall, formed on the pendent catkins ; the artichoke 
gall, or oak strobite, probably the “ oak-nut” of the ancients. It is about the size 
of a filbert, and resembles a fir-cone or artichoke. It is produced by the Cynips 
Quercus Gemme, and is a most beautiful foliose gall; for the development of 
the bud, although perverted, not being wholly prevented, the leaves are gradually 
evolved. The bedeguar, or hairy gall (Galla capillaris), of the ancients, is a beautiful 
though scarce species. In structure it is like the bedeguar, or “‘ Robin’s pincushion,” 
of the rose-tree, and is usually situated in the axils of the leaves. Whether the “oak- 
wool,” once so celebrated as wicks for lamps, was the same as our cottony or woolly 
gall is doubtful. The leaves of the oak-tree are likewise subject to the attacks of 
insects, and are often observed covered with curious excrescences of different forms, 
occasionally of a beautiful rosy colour. Oak spangles, or little red insular scales on 
the under side of the oak-leaf, are mentioned by Mr. Lowndes, and described by the 
Rev. N. T. Bree. Some writers consider them to be parasitic plants; others, the 
work of an insect. 
A very curious legend existed at one time about the fruit of the oak-tree, which 
is perpetuated by its relation in Gerard’s Herbal. Many old writers assert that 
there are “certain trees, whereon do grow certain shells, tending to russet, wherein 
are contained little living creatures, which shells in time of maturitie do open, and 
out of them do grow those little living things, which falling into the water do 
become fowles, which we call barnakles; but the other which do fall on the land 
perish and come to nothing.” Now the origin of the word barnacle is said by 
Professer Burnet to be from “bairn, a child, and aacle or acle, the aac or oak, 
signifying the child or offspring of the oak. Gerard gives us a most amusing 
account of his having seen and touched these barnacles on old and broken pieces of 
wood washed up from the sea, and says: “ When it is perfectly formed, the shelf 
gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the aforesaid lace or string; next 
come the legs of the bird, hanging out, and, as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell 
by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill; in short 
space after it cometh to full maturitie and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth 
feathers, and groweth to a fowl bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a goose, having 
black legs, bill or beake, and feathers black and white, spotted in such a manner as 
our magpie, called in some places a pie-annet, which the people of Lancashire call by 
no other name than a tree goose ; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, let them repair to 
me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonie of good witnesses.” This very curious 
fable must have originated from the fact of old pieces of oak wood being frequently 
found with a colony of cirripedes or barnacles attached to them, and the fibrous cirri 
or fringe-like appendages which hang from their shells and move about look some- 
thing like the feathers of a bird, and may have misled the credulous observers of 
former times, who associated them with the birds feeding at the water’s edge in this 
extraordinary manner. This story is as reliable as the more generally received notion 
that toads and frogs have been discovered in the heart of ancient trees embedded in 
the wood, but yet alive, having been enclosed in that position for centuries. In order 
to prove that such a condition of life was impossible, Dr. Buckland some years ago 
tried the experiment, and enclosed three toads of moderate size in the trunk of a tree, 
in holes made air-tight, but large enough not to crush them. At the end of a year 
every one of the toads thus pegged in the knotty entrails of the tree was found dead 
and decayed. The oak is the badge of the Scotch clan Cameron. 
