II. 1. THE ROCK CHESTNUT OAK. 139 



When the trees are cut young, the stumps throw up shoots, 

 of four feet or more in length, the first year. 



This beautiful tree has many claims to attention. It is, ac- 

 cording to the uniform testimony of those who have tried it as 

 fuel, superior, for that purpose, to any other oak which will 

 grow in the same situation, and it is generally considered supe- 

 rior to every other wood. Mr. Bull's experiments would lead 

 to a different conclusion, as he makes its value less than that 

 of most other oaks. 



As timber, it ranks, with many, next to the white oak. It is 

 doubtless very valuable, but not more so than either of the pre- 

 ceding oaks. 



The bark, wherever it has been used, is highly esteemed by 

 tanners. 



The acorns, which it produces as scantily and as rarely as 

 either of the preceding, are large and very sweet. 



But the chief recommendation of the rock chestnut oak, is 

 the situation in which it grows. It grows naturally and flour- 

 ishes on the steep sides of rocky hills, where few other trees 

 thrive, and where the other kinds of oak can hardly get a foot- 

 hold. There are, probably, thousands of acres of hilly, rocky 

 land, in almost every county in Massachusetts, where various 

 kinds of evergreens have grown, unmixed with deciduous trees, 

 until they have exhausted all the nutriment suited to their sup- 

 port, and where now, consequently, nothing thrives, which 

 would furnish abundant support for this kind of oak. 



It is well known, that successive growths of trees of the same 

 family exhaust the soil, in the same manner as successive crops 

 of annual or other herbaceous plants of the same kind. And 

 they not only exhaust it, but are supposed to fill it with excre- 

 mentitious matter, which is in a manner poisonous to analogous 

 plants. The remedy, in cultivated lands, is a rotation of crops. 

 The same suggests itself in the forest; and, whenever it can 

 take place, a rotation is established by nature. But where no 

 seed, of a kind entirely unlike that which has grown upon the 

 soil, is found, unassisted , nature cannot supply the want. In 

 such cases, the art of man may come in with advantage. There 

 is every reason to believe, that if acorns of the oak of which 



