Socrates took oath by the oak; also the women of Priene, a maritime city of Ionia, in matters of importance. On Mount Lycæus, in Arcadia, there was a temple of Jupiter with a fountain, into which the priest threw an oak branch, in times of drought, to produce rain. The Greeks had two remarkable sayings relative to this tree, one of which was the phrase: "I speak to the oak," as a solemn asseveration; and the other, "born of an oak," applied to a foundling; because anciently children, when the parents were unable to provide for them, were frequently exposed in the hollow of an oak tree. So important a position does the oak occupy in the history of the subject we are now discussing, that before dismissing it we feel bound to call attention to some of those mythological allusions to it which have been collected by Loudon for the enrichment of the pages of his admirable "History of the Trees and Shrubs of Britain." "The oak was dedicated by the ancients to Jupiter, because it was said that an oak tree sheltered that god at his birth on Mount Lycæus, in Arcadia; and there is scarcely a Greek or Latin poet or prose author, who does not make some allusion to this tree. Herodotus first mentions the sacred forest of Dodona (ii. c. 57.) and relates the traditions he heard respecting it from the priests of Egypt. Two black doves, he says, took their flight from the city of Thebes, one of which flew to the temple of Jupiter Ammon and the other to Dodona, where, with a human voice, it acquainted the inhabitants that Jupiter had consecrated the ground, which would in future give oracles. All the trees in the grove became endowed with the gift of prophecy; and the sacred oaks not only spoke and delivered oracles while in a living state, but, when some of them were cut down to build the ship 'Argo,' the beams and masts of that ship frequently spoke and warned the Argonauts of approaching calamities. (See Hom. Ody., xiv.; Lucian, vi., 427; Apoll., Book I., &c.) After giving the account above related, Herodotus adds what he calls the explanation of it. He says that some Phœnician merchants carried off an Egyptian priestess from Thebes into Greece, where she took up her residence in the forest of Dodona, and erected there, at the foot of an old oak, a small temple in honour of Jupiter, whose priestess she had been at Thebes. The town and temple of Dodona are said by others to have been built by Deucalion immediately after the great flood, when, in gratitude for his preservation, he raised a temple to Jupiter, and consecrated the oak grove to his honour. This grove, or rather forest, extended from Dodona to Chaonia, a mountainous district of Epirus, so called from Chaon, son of Priam, who was accidently killed there by his brother Helenus. The forest was, from this, sometimes called the Chaonian Forest; and Jupiter Chaonian Father. (See Virgil, Ovid, &c.) The oracle of Dodona was not only the most