152 
NATURE NOTES 
“ The Oak, when living, the monarch of the wood, 
The English Oak, when dead, commands the flood. 
The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees, 
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees ; 
Three centuries he grows, and then he stays 
Supreme in state ; and in three more decays.” 
The oak is pre-eminent for the noble qualities of strength 
and endurance, and its history is closely interwoven with the 
record of our national life, and takes us back to the early times 
when our island was covered by almost unbroken woods, which 
could not but influence much of its history. It is not well 
known that there are two kinds of indigenous oaks, called some- 
times the wavy-leaved oak and the flat-leaved oak, the Quercus 
pedunculata and the Quercus sessilijlora, which are clearly distinguish- 
able, though it is not easy to say which is the better of the two. 
The first takes its name from the fact that its fruit, the acorn, is 
borne upon a slender peduncle or stalk, which is often several 
inches long ; the fruit of the second is what is termed sessile, 
from the Latin word sessilis “ sitting,” because it sits upon its 
support without any intermediate stalk. The leaves of the 
wavy-leaved oak are stemless ; but those of the flat-leaved oak 
are borne on stems, which are often of good length. 
The word Quercus is said to be of Celtic origin, and means a 
fine tree ; and the word oak comes from the early English ac , 
from which, also, we take the name of the fruit, the acorn, and 
from which, too, we derive the name of many places, such as 
Acton, which means Oaktown. The word Robur, sometimes 
applied to oaks in general, is a Latin word which denotes strength, 
and the ancient Greeks, with whom the oak was a prominent 
forest tree, called it “ drys,” whence comes the name of the 
Dryads, or nymphs of the wood, and possibly that of the Druids, 
though that may better be derived from the Celtic word derw, 
which means the oak, and is applied to the priests of Ancient 
Britain, and, after them, to many an old fort or earth-work, to 
which it is often misapplied by those who will not seek for better 
derivations. 
We should also mention Quercus Ilex, the evergreen oak, 
which, from a naturalisation of many hundreds of years, has 
almost a right to claim a place among our woodland trees. This 
is probably the oak referred to in the Bible. It is not by any 
means so noble a tree as our oak ; and though it bears acorns, 
the fruit takes two years to perfect, and bears bitter and sweet 
fruit, sometimes on the same tree. The leaves have a sort of 
resemblance to those of the holly, hence the tree is often called 
the Holly or Holm Oak. 
Rookwood, Bournemouth. W. J. C. Miller. 
