II. 1. THE RED OAK. 149 



texture thin and membranaceous ; the color of a lively, shining 

 green above, paler, but shining beneath. 



The acorns are larger and contained in a broader and shal- 

 lower cup, than those of any other northern oak. The cup is 

 invested with narrow, thin, and very close scales. The kernel is 

 whitish, and bitter to the taste, but the acorns are eagerly sought 

 after by cattle and swine, though they seem not to be much in 

 request with the smaller wild animals. 



The red oak is of little value for fuel or for most purposes 

 as timber. The sour and acrid juices, which can hardly be 

 expelled from the wood by natural or artificial seasoning, rapidly 

 corrode iron spikes which are driven into it ; and the bark is 

 almost worthless for the use of the tanner. Beams made of it, 

 and employed in the frame of buildings, have, indeed, been 

 found free from decay at the end of a century ; and it is easily 

 distinguished, even at that age, from the wood of any other oak, 

 by its not having become seasoned, and by its thence imperfect 

 combustibility. From having names given it which belong to 

 far more valuable species, it has, in many places, a better repu- 

 tation than it deserves. It is used, and that only for inferior 

 purposes, where no other species of oak can be obtained. 



But, like some individuals in a higher field in creation, it 

 compensates in some measure for its comparative uselessness, 

 by its great beauty. No other oak flourishes so readily in every 

 situation; no other is of so rapid growth; no other surpasses it 

 in beauty of foliage and of trunk ; no oak attains, in this cli- 

 mate, to more magnificent dimensions; no tree, except the white 

 oak, gives us so noble an idea of strength. 



A red oak, in Lancaster, at the foot of George's Hill, west of 

 the north branch of the Nashua, measured, in 1840, seventeen 

 feet in circumference, at three feet from the ground, and fourteen 

 feet ten inches, at six. A wall prevented its being measured 

 at the surface, where it is much larger. It continues very 

 large for eighteen or twenty feet, when it divides into four or 

 five very large limbs, which spread and form a fine round head. 

 I have found many other large trees. 



It is of singularly rapid growth from the stump, the shoots 

 rising sometimes to six feet or more in one season. Careful 



