352 
PLINTHS NATUEAL HISTOET. 
[Book XVI. 
to a small round ball that is employed in medicine for its 
caustic properties. It grows on the fir likewise, the larch, 
the pitch-tree, the linden, the nut-tree, and the plane, and 
remains on the tree throughout the winter, after the leaves have 
fallen. It contains a kernel very similar to that of the pine- 
nut, and increases in size during the winter. In spring the 
ball opens throughout, and it finally drops when the leaves 
are beginning to grow. 
Such is the multiplicity of the products borne by the robur 
in addition to its acorns ; and not only these, but mushrooms'^ 
as well, of better or worse quality, the most recent stimulants 
that have been discovered for the appetite ; these last are found 
growing about its roots. Those of the quercus are the most 
highly esteemed, while those of the robur, the cypress, and 
the pine are injurious."^^ The robur produces mistletoe^^ also, 
and, if we may believe Hesiod,^^ honey as well : indeed, it is 
a well-known feet, that a honey ^^-like dew falling from heaven, as 
we have already mentioned,^^ deposits itself upon the leaves of 
this tree in preference to those of any other. It is also well 
known that the wood of this tree, when burnt, produces a 
nitrous^^ ash, 
amentum of the botanists ; but it is doubtful if Pliny attaches this meaning 
to the word, as the lime or linden-tree has no catkin, but an inflorescence 
of a different character. It is not improbable that, under this name, he 
alludes to some excrescence. 
"^^ These were the boletus'' and the ''suillus the last of which seem 
only to have been recently introduced at table in the time of Pliny. See 
B. xxii. c. 47. 
'^'^ He alludes clearly to fungi of radically different qualities, as the na- 
ture of the trees beneath which they grow cannot possibly influence them, 
any further than by the various proportions of shade they afford. The soil, 
however, exercises great influence on the quality of the fungus ; growing 
upon a hill, it may be innoxious, while in a wet soil it may be productive 
of death. ^« See cc. 93, 94, and 95, of this Book. 
'9 Works and Days, 1. 230. 
^ Pliny seems to have here taken in a literal sense, what has been said 
figuratively by Virgil, Eel. iv. 1. 26 : 
Et dura3 quercus sudabunt roscida mella 
and by Ovid, in relation to the Golden Age, Met. i. 113 : 
Flavaque de viridi stillabant ilice mella." 
Fee remarks, that we find on the leaf of the lime-tree a thin, sugary de- 
posit, left by insects, and that a species of manna exudes from the Coniferae, 
as also the bark of the beech. This, however, is never the case with the 
oak. 81 B. xi, c. 12. 
By this word, Fee observes, we must not understand the word " nitre," 
