THE TREES OF AMERICA. 17 



PLATE III. 



ASSABET OAK, ON THE RANDALL ESTATE, STOW, MASS. 



" Jove's own tree, 

 That holds the woods in awful sovereignty ; 

 For length of ages lasts, his Chappy reign, 

 ■ And lives of mortal map contend in vain ; 

 Full in the midst of his own strength he stands', 

 Stretching his brawny arms an^ l^aiy hands ; 

 His shade protects, the plains, his head the hills commands." — ViBGlL. 



The oak is eminently the. historic tree. From the earliest records of man- 

 kind, through all past history, it has been connected with the most important 

 embodied ideas of the race. It has looked do-n(n as calmly, in its dignity and 

 .grandeur, upon the priests who made it sacred as the emblem of deity, and 

 offered sacrifices beneath its leafy arches, as upon the niurdered son of the royal 

 Psalmist, or upon the more terrible offering of the relentless Jean Ziska. 

 , The first oracles which conveyed the will of the gods to man were revealed 

 in the sacred oak groves, or uttered through voices from the inspired trees 

 themselves, — 



Which in Dodona did enshrine ; 



Sofeith too foniJly' deemed a^voice divine." 



Our ancestors, the Britoijs, worshiped the oak. The Druids believed that every 

 thing came from God which grew upon it. Their very name, it is said, is derived 

 from it, as only beneath its solemn shade did they dare to address the gods. 



Four centuries ago the hero Wallace, with his boy companions, played beneath 

 the shade of the Wallace oak. Now 



