BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT. 177 



nearly cylindrical near the ground. Specimens from the college grounds in 

 the museum illustrate this fact. 



Three specimens — two of oaks and one beech — each contain a deer's antler 

 imbedded in the wood, where two of them had been completely covered. A 

 broken chain link was found when a stick of maple was split. 



Here are thirty-one young trees of full length, usually nine years old, 

 taken from our arboretum. 



An assortment of slabs, carefully selected, illustrates the barks of most of 

 our leading sorts of native trees, some of which are already scarce or wanting 

 in many neighborhoods. 



There is a large assortment of knots from most of our species of trees. 

 These are to illustrate the damage which is done to a tree by dead knots. 

 Some sound knots are cut and polished, and some that are defective are also 

 cut to show this fact. Limbs of an apple tree and another from a button- 

 wood show two series, illustrating the various stages in healing over. 



The trunks of some trees are very winding. To illustrate this are two 

 ironwoods, a tamarack, a white cedar and a yucca. 



Next we come to numerous examples in which one limb or tree had 

 damaged another by rubbing or growing against it. Of such we have the 

 blue beech, silver maple, white ash, locust and others. Vines of various 

 kinds wind about and damage trees or branches. Here a bittersweet has 

 died in the first attempt to strangle a white oak. A branch was repeating 

 the operation when the specimen was brought to the museum. 



A vine of moon seed about a blue beech illustrates precisely the same con- 

 dition of things. A grape-vine over one hundred feet long winds gracefully 

 about among the upper timbers of the museum, and a section of another is 

 about seven inches in diameter. 



Next we come to some trees badly scarred and healing over where floating 

 ice had passed by in the spring. And next we notice how maples, hickories, 

 oaks and basswoods were shivered or bent in different manners by a tornado. 

 A photograph illustrates barns, houses, orchards much damaged on the spot 

 where they were entirely demolished. 



There are pieces of the trunks of a baisswood, white ash, white oak, show- 

 ing the work of lightning. Next appear three miserable looking specimens, 

 showing the struggles of a poplar *and two maples to heal over their wounds 

 made by horses hitched to them for want of suitable posts. 



Specimens illustrate the damage done to maples by sap-spiles, and others 

 the attempts to heal over where the bark had died, or the trunk had been 

 checked. These beeches, maples, basswoods, show the effect of sap-suckers, 

 which dug for the cambium layer years before. There are no indications of 

 any insects. A squirrel kept this hole open where a limb had died ; wood- 

 peckers had made these holes in decaying poplars for their nests ; and here 

 are a large number of boards, blocks, bark, limbs, showing the effect of 

 borers. Larvae of numerous insects as they had damaged apple trees, locust, 

 hickory, ash, oak, tamarack, pine, and there hangs a small tree with all its 

 branches. The latter was a Scotch pine, and died soon after setting in spring. 

 Beetles ate the young wood and young bark, so the outer bark was easily 

 removed. 



Here is a good start towards a collection of tough wood of our valuable 

 oaks, hickories, ashes, elms, ironwood, beech, basswood, and near them should 

 be placed samples of brash or defective woods. Near by are two samples 



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