152 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



as the Continental botanists consider them, of the European 

 white oak. Next to the white oak, are to be arranged, at nearly 

 equal distances about it, the over cup, the post and the swamp 

 white oak, forming a second group, with qualities very nearly 

 equal to those of the first. Of these, the last is most remote, 

 and connects them with the chestnut oak group, to which the 

 elder Michaux considered it as belonging. This third group 

 includes the chestnut oak, the rock chestnut, and the chinca- 

 pin, with the chestnut white oak of a region further south. All 

 these slide, by almost imperceptible gradations, into each other. 

 The fourth group, entirely distinct, includes the black, the 

 scarlet, the red and the bear oak, so nearly allied as to be 

 generally considered the "red oaks;" and in many places this 

 single name includes them all. 



ON PLANTING WITH OAKS. 



The value of oak timber is already so great, and it is so con- 

 stantly and surely increasing, from the diminution of the home 

 supply and the increased difficulty of getting it from abroad, 

 all the kinds of oak, are, moreover, of so slow growth, and the 

 number of years necessary to create a forest so very great, and 

 dependence on a foreign supply is so unsafe, that it is obviously 

 important that means should be immediately taken to con- 

 vert into future forests some of the many thousand acres sus- 

 ceptible of this, which are now lying waste. 



I shall, therefore, make no apology for giving a brief account 

 of the means which have been most successfully used in England 

 and on the continent of Europe, for the forming of oak forests. 



In Britain, innumerable experiments have been tried, ever 

 since the days of Evelyn. For the details of these, I must 

 refer to the many publications on the subject which have been 

 made in that country, particularly to Loudon's Arboretum, 

 which gives a historical view of all the most important ones : — 



"Artificial shelter," says Loudon, (Arb., IV, p. 1800,) "it is 

 allowed by almost all writers on the culture of the oak, is essen- 

 tially necessary to ensure the rapid progress of a young planta- 



