QUERNALS. ° ; 353 
frame of variable size, with petiolate, oblong, almost oval, sinuated 
leaves, with a fructifying peduncle much shorter than the 
petioles; the fruit arrives at maturity the same year with the 
flowers which are to produce their successors. 
Quercus Ilex is an Evergreen Oak, native of the European con- 
tinent, of some 50 to 60 feet in height; the leaves are shiny 
above, grey or whitish and tomentose on the lower surface; the 
fruits are sessile, or borne by the short, downy, or rather hairy 
peduncle, with tubulous, scaly, cotonous cupulla. They grow in 
arid places, and are common in the South of France. The acorns 
are sweet and eatable. The wood is very combustible, and much 
used in France as fuel; besides which, it is largely employed in 
naval construction, carpenter’s and cabinet work. 
_ The Cork-tree (Quercus suber), of which we have already spoken 
in the chapter on Bark, is closely allied to the Evergreen Oaks ; its 
leaves are persistent till the end of the second and even the third 
year. It is, as already stated, the corticle, or bark, largely deve- 
loped, which produces the substance known under the name of 
cork. It grows upon mountains of slight elevation, a little removed 
from the basin of the Mediterranean. Limited to some parts of the 
South of France and to Spain, the Cork Oak is the predominant 
Mhabitant of the forests of Algeria, where it constitutes woods of 
great extent, occasionally mixed, however, with other denizens of 
the forest, 
The Kermes Oak (Quercus coccifera) is a tufty bush, of from 
T to 12 feet high, with small, oblong, cordate, dentate, thorny, 
Persistent leaves of a smooth green; common in dry, sandy, and 
Stony places in the regions of the Mediterranean. It is upon this 
hittle Oak that the cochineal, a hemipteral insect, lives, from 
Which the beautiful scarlet colour was obtained before the intro- 
duction and employment of the cochineal of the Cactus (Cochinil- 
lifera of Nopal) into Europe. 
| Club-shaped Oaks are distinguished by their thin and deeply 
dentated leaves, the loose, narrow scale of their cup, and their 
ng deciduous stipules. 
 , Ne Quercus cerris, rather rare, but widely disseminated in France, 
; i anttable for the scales of its cupulla, which are linear, recurved 
the outside, and gyrose on their upper part. In this species 
ee AA 
