At a very distant period, when gods, not over edifying in their conduct, descended at times from the heights of Olympus to enliven their immortality amongst mortals, we are told that a divine aliment charmed the palate of Jupiter and that of his quarrelsome wife; nay, of all those who inhabited the celestial abode. We are ignorant of the hour at which the table of the god of thunder was laid; but we know well that he breakfasted, dined, and supped on a delicious ambrosia--a liquid substance, it may be presumed, since it flowed for the first time from one of the horns of the goat Amalthæa, and of rather an insipid taste, if we are to believe Ibicus,[III-1] who describes it as nine times sweeter than honey. The gods have disappeared; we would forgive them for leaving us, had they left behind them the recipe of this marvellous substance; but its composition and essence remain unknown, and man, not skilful enough to appropriate to his use the inexhaustible treasures of culinary science, began his hard gastrophagic apprenticeship by devouring acorns which grew in the forests.[III-2] This is assuredly very mortifying to our feelings; but you may believe it on the authority of a poet, for we well know that a poet never tells an untruth.[III-3] Besides, fabulous antiquity adds new weight to the fact, by informing us that the Arcadian Pelasgus[III-4] deserved that altars should be erected to his memory, for having taught the Greeks to choose in preference the beech-nut, as the most delicate of this class of comestibles, according to the tender Virgil, who, however, only judged of it by hearsay.[III-5] There is a great degree of probability in the supposition that the different races of the north, each inhabiting a country covered with immense forests, lived for a long time on the fruit of these different kinds of oak which they possessed in such abundance. The great respect they had for the tree, the pompous ceremony with which the high priest of the Druids came every year to cut away the parasitical plant which clings to it, the very name of the Druids--derived from a celtic word signifying _oak_--all seem to point out the first food of our ancestors. The oak furnished the primitive aliment of almost every nation, in their original state of barbarism. Some of them had even preserved a taste for the acorn after they became civilized. Among the Arcadians and the Spaniards, the acorn was regarded as a delicious article of food. We read in Pliny that, in his time, these latter had them served on their tables at dessert, after they had been roasted in the wood-ashes to soften them. According to Champier, this custom still subsisted in Spain in the 16th century. The regulation made by Chrodegand, Bishop of Metz, about the end of the 8th century, for the canons, says expressly[III-6] that if, in an unfavorable year, the acorn or flour should fail, it will be the duty of the bishop to provide it.