THE HISTORY OF OAKS The oak was held sacred by the Greeks, Romans, Teutons and Celts. They venerated the living tree for its fruit which fed them, and for its lumber which housed them and served as their defence against their enemies. " Hearts of oak" were built into the Norsemen's ships that storms could not wrench apart. The triremes of the great navies of Greece and Rome were of oak tim ber. So were their great bridges, aqueducts and buildings— triumphs of architectural art and engineering skill. The very columns, with their flaring bases and capitals, were modelled from the trunks of oaks. The curves of the branches suggested their arches, and the leaves and acorns gave them designs for ornamentation.
The Druids held their most solemn rites under the sacred shade of their oak groves. The mistletoe was gathered on the coming in of the new year, and only a hook of gold was fit for this ceremony. Their Yule log was an oak tree cut down, drawn home and offered on the rude hearth as a sacrifice to Yaioul, the Celtic god of fire, in the feast of midwinter. It was through his favour that winter's icy grasp loosened, and the days began to lengthen.
Sleeping under the shade of an oak was counted a sovereign cure for paralytics. The benefits of such treatment must have depended upon the weather, for oaks in thunderstorms seem very prone to "draw the stroke." Shakespeare's famous apostrophe in "Measure for Measure" seconds the popular belief in his time; the opinion prevails among woodsmen to-day: "Merciful heaven! Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle." There is a whole thunderstorm crowded into these lines.
Durability is a prime merit in oak timber. The oldest houses in England show their oak beams and panelling as sound to-day as ever. Shrines of the early kings carved in oak have not yet begun to show signs of age. "Antique oak" is imitated by staining to very dark colour the stock used in furniture manufactories. Genuine "antique oak" is a priceless treasure.
Bog Oak.—This oak, a favourite wood in the decorative arts, is obtained from trunks which have lain and blackened in the peat bogs of Ireland and England for untold centuries. These logs, exhumed, seasoned, and sawed into lumber, bring extrava gant prices. Wholesale inundation of forests, due possibly to
earthquakes, produced some of this bog oak. Tradition has it that, in 55 B. C., Casar's army, wintering in the land of the Britons, was set to cutting down the forests and dragging the logs into boggy districts. This was to keep the army under strict discipline, and to spite the unfriendly Britons. The camps and bridges the Romans built consumed many of the sacred oak groves, and the surplus, maliciously buried in the swamps, has been discovered and dug up centuries later. This wood is described by Evelyn as taking on a colour and hardness "emulating the politest ebony." Structure of Oak wood shows distinct annual rings, each made of a band of close grained, pale summer wood, and dark, open, porous layer of spring wood. Broad, shining bands of fibres extend in vertical plates from centre to bark in the tree. When the wood is properly sawed these shining medullary, or pith rays, show as irregular patches on the surface. Much of the beauty of polished oak depends upon these "mirrors," which are the largest when the wood is "quarter sawed"—that is, when sawed toward the centre of the log. Gnarled roots and tortuous branches of old oak trees furnish wood of curly grain which is highly prized for veneering.
Uses of vary in sweetness and edibility. They all contain food elements, and primitive peoples have used them as food. The Californian white oak (Quercus lobata) has a sweet acorn which the Indians bake, shell, and then grind into a coarse meal out of which bread is made. The New England Indian tribes ate the acorns of white oaks of various species, as did the tribes farther south. The Japanese and Chinese have species with edible acorns. In Europe the acorn crop is watched with great solicitude. The ancients believed that . . . men fed with oaken mast The aged trees themselves in years surpassed." Quercus esculus was especially esteemed for food. The mast was also depended upon for the fattening of swine. English villagers still enjoy in many places the ancient "right of pannage," the privilege, granted them by some early king, of turning their hogs in autumn into the royal forests.