and by Ovid, in relation to the Golden Age, Met. i. 113:
“Flavaque de viridi stillabant ilice mella.”
Fée remarks, that we find on the leaf of the lime-tree a thin, sugary deposit, left by insects, and that a species of manna exudes from the Coniferæ, as also the bark of the beech. This, however, is never the case with the oak.
[2271] By this word, Fée observes, we must not understand the word “nitre,” in the modern sense, but the sub-carbonate of potash; while the ashes of trees growing on the shores of the sea produce a sub-carbonate of soda.
[2272] “Coccus.” This is not a gall, but the distended body of an insect, the kermes, which grows on a peculiar oak, the “Quercus coccifera,” found in the south of Europe.
[2273] We have previously mentioned, that he seems to have confounded the holly with the holm oak.
[2274] Poinsinet, rather absurdly, as it would appear, finds in this word the origin of our word “cochineal.”
[2275] The kermes berry is but little used in Spain, or, indeed, anywhere else, since the discovery of the cochineal of America.
[2276] B. ix. c. 65.