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AMERICAN FORESTRY 



is pyramidal in shape. With its bright, 

 green, glossy feathery leaves in summer 

 and its glowing colors in the fall the pin 

 oak will always be a favorite. It begins 

 to turn about October 10th and the 

 show lasts until November. Its acorns 

 are small, pretty, round and striped, 

 much prized by birds and squirrels. 

 They do not sprout until the following 

 spring. The black oak is rather hard 

 to tell off-hand from the scarlet, as its 

 leaves and acorns are very much alike. 

 If you dig into the bark, however, with 

 your penknife the story is soon told, for 

 the inner bark of the black or "golden" 

 oak is bright yellow, the best yellow 

 dye in the woods, while the inner bark 

 of the scarlet oak turns red upon ex- 

 posure to the air. There is some differ- 

 ence in the acorns, too, those of the 

 black oak being larger and more deeply 

 covered by the cup, particularly when 

 young, when it almost encloses the 

 acorn completely. It is important to 

 know wdiich is which, for the scarlet is 

 much the more ornamental tree though 

 always small, while the black gives a 

 good lumber and a reasonable fall col- 

 oration. 



The red oak you cannot mistake the 

 moment you pick up one of its acorns, 

 for it will be large and blunt ended with 

 a flat cup. The tree is a fast grower in 

 its early years, and if located near a 

 white oak will usually crowd it out and 

 suppress it, but give both trees an equal 



chance at the sun, clearing the way 

 ahead and around the white oak to 

 make up for its less abundant leaf area 

 and you will not find more than an inch 

 difference in their diameters in the fif- 

 tieth year. The red oak prefers a 

 rather dry clay or limestone base soil; 

 we have few of them in the rich moist 

 sandy base soils of Interlaken, but they 

 are abundant in the red Trenton lime- 

 stones further west, in the clayey river 

 bottoms of the Middle States, and on 

 granite base in New York. Shade en- 

 during when young, a good fighter for 

 light as it grows up, easily transplanted 

 and like most of the oaks free from in- 

 sect attack, the red will always hold its 

 own and it has the better acorns of all 

 the bristle-leaved cousins, sprouting the 

 spring after falling, so it has not much 

 trouble reproducing itself. It has no 

 autumn beauty and its wood is second 

 grade, weak and bushy, so I would al- 

 ways favor the white oak in preference 

 to it when growing together, and never 

 could see any reason for our State for- 

 est services pushing it ahead of the 

 white oak for plantations simply be- 

 cause it grows much faster at first. 



In our next paper we will look over 

 the maples, hickories, ashes, elms and 

 miscellaneous broadleaves as seen from 

 the point of view of the man who owns 

 them and proposes to raise more of the 

 same kind. 



{To be continued.) 



