The Oak: Its Natural History, Antiquity, and Folk-Lore

Abstract

THE editor of “White's Selborne” has given us a most dainty and chatty little volume on the “monarch of the woods.” It is adorned on its cover with a panel of real oak, and furnished inside with beautiful illustrations specially produced for this work by the author. The book is divided into chapters on the oak in general; its economic value; historic and veteran oaks; the enemies and parasites of the oak; the oak in myth and folklore; and the oak in Holy Writ. On such a subject; the most important chapter, from a sentimental point of view, is the one on “Mistletoe-Oaks and Oak-Mistletoe.” We learn, as leading facts, that the mistletoe grows on oak only “in odd instances.” The known instances are given as the result of careful search and inquiry, and the only present instance, it seems, occurs in the: neighbourhood of Eastnor Park, Herefordshire. The only English species of mistletoe is Viscum alburn, which grows extensively on apple-trees. In the south of Europe Viscum aureum or Loranthus europaeus grows in abundance on oak trees. Important information on the same subject is given by Sir Norman Lockyer in his “Stonehenge” (second edition, pp. 26, 27), and from the facts the following deductions seem natural and reasonable.

The Oak: Its Natural History, Antiquity, and Folk-Lore.

C. Mosley. Pp. ix + 126. (London: Elliot Stock.) Price 5s. net.