THE OAK. 



41 



I have already quoted, tells us, that galls of this 

 kind \vere in his day commonly consulted as augu- 

 ries. The Oke-appleSj" he says, being broken 

 in sunder about the time of their withering, doe 

 foreshew the sequell of the yeare^ as the expert 

 Kentish husbandmen have observed by the living 

 things found in them ; as, if they finde an ant, 

 they foretell plenty of graine to ensue ; if a white 

 worm, like a gentill or magot, then they prog- 

 nosticate murren of beasts and cattell ; if a spider, 

 then (say they) we shall have a pestilence, or 

 some such like sicknesse to follow amongst men. 

 These things the learned also have observed and 

 noted ; for Matthiolus, writing upon Dioscorides, 

 saith, that before they have an hole through 

 them they containe in them either a flie, a spider, 

 or a worme ; if a flie, then vv'arre ensueth ; if a 

 creeping worme, then scarcity of victuals ; if a 

 running spider, then followeth great sickenesse or 

 mortalitie." * 



* "The presage of the year preceding, whicli is commonly made 

 from insects or little animals in Oak-apples, according to the kinds 

 thereof, either maggot, ily, or spider: that is, of famine, war, or 

 pestilence ; whether we mean that woody excrescence, which shooteth 

 from the branch about ^lay, or that round and apple-like accretion 

 which groweth under the leaf about the latter end of summerj is, I 

 doubt, too distinct, nor yerifiable from. event. For flies and maggots 

 are found every year, very seldom spiders : and Helmont affirmeth, 

 he could never find the spider and the fly upon the same trees, that 

 is the signs of war and pestilence, which often go together : besides, 

 that the flies found were at first maggots, experience hath informed 

 us ; for keeping those excrescences, we have observed their conver- 

 sions, beholding in magnifying glasses the daily progression thereof. 

 As may be also observed in other vegetable excretions, whose maggots 

 do terminate in flies of constant shapes ; as in the nut-galls of the 

 outlandish Oak, and the mossy tuft of the wild Briar ; which having 

 gathered in November, we have found the little maggots, which 

 lodged in wooden cells all winter, to turn into flies in June." — Sir 

 T. Browne's Vulgar Errors. 



