i.] OF THE ANCIENTS. 15 



Its name is taken from 'AA/^Aoto?, a kind of 

 Oak described by Theophrastus much in the same 

 terms as those which Pliny uses, and deriving its 

 name from Ay, ' salt,' and (f)Xoio?, ' bark.' 



The Q. cerris of Pliny would seem to be the 

 Turkey Oak of modern writers, although there is 

 much confusion in the account given of it, and we 

 have seen that some imagine the Hemeris to be 

 the Cerris of botanists, which however does not 

 accord with the bitter character of its acorn. 



The Suber of Pliny is the 0eAAo? of Theophras- 

 tus, both of which are described in such a manner 

 by the Greek as well as by the Roman naturalist, as 

 to identify them with our Cork-tree. 



The only circumstance which might lead us to 

 doubt this, is that in one passage Theophrastus 

 states that it sheds its leaves annually, whereas our 

 Cork-tree is an evergreen. In another passage, 

 however, he calls it, as Pliny and other Roman 

 writers have done, an evergreen. Commentators 

 have tried to get over this difficulty, by pointing out 

 that there is actually a variety of the Cork-tree, 

 which sheds its leaves in April, and which has been 

 observed near Bayonne k . The time of shedding 

 the leaves is, indeed, not characteristic of a species, 

 for the Lucombe Oak 1 , which passes for an ever- 

 green, as its leaves remain on all the winter, is 



k Clusius, Plant, rar. Hist., lib. i. c. 14, and Miller's "Gardener's 

 Dictionary." 



1 Pliny, lib. xvi. c. 21, records as a marvel, that a single Oak (Quer- 

 cus) existed in the territory of the Thurii, where Sybaris formerly 

 stood, which never lost its leaves, and did not bud till Midsummer. 



