220 
ply of building timber, and the acorns of the white oak, containing 
ess tannin than those of the black oak, were probably of 
bad. 
much 
value as food for turkeys and hogs, as well as for the Indians. 
From the Earl of Strafford’s letters and dispatches [see Flint, 
p. 36], “ There are fayre Turkeys far greater than heere, 500 in 
flocks with infinite stores of Berries, Chestnuts, Beechnuts and 
Mast wch they feed on.” Remains of the curious fences made by 
— 
cutting and bending oak trees are still to be found on Long Island 
(fig. 5), as described by Flint (p. 29): “In eastern Suffolk a 
unique form of hedgerow is common, at once picturesque and dis- 
tinctive. It is formed by cutting down the oaks or chestnuts leav- 
prone bodies of the trees to form a line of rude 
fl. 
ing the stumps anc 
fence. The sprouts are then allowed to grow up, and their con- 
torted branches interlaced with blackberry and greenbrier form an 
impenetrable barrier. They, in their turn, are cut and recut, until 
the hedge becomes several feet in thickness.” 
The white or swamp cedar (fig. 6) now almost extinct on Long 
Island, seems at one time to have had a fairly wide range, for we 
read in Thompson (p. 50): ‘ An extensive marsh of peat, which 
is probably deep and of fine quality, hes near the road from Wal- 
The 
liamsburgh to Jamaica, and is called the Cedar Swamp.” 
white cedar, chiefly of coastal-plain distribution, forms huge 
swamps in New Jersey and extends inland to the New Jersey high- 
lands and even to central New Hampshire. It is not to be con- 
fused with the more common red cedar, the wood of which is in 
great demand for lead pencils and cedar chests. The well-known 
spire-like red cedar trees, abundant on Long Island, are quite dif- 
ferent in appearance from the typical red cedars of the southern 
states, and constitute the recently recognized var. crebra Fernald 
and Griscom,! differing not only in their spire-like outline but also 
in the shallow pitting of the seeds. Another timber tree of interest 
was the tulip tree (Liriodendron), a s 
Pond mentioned by Miss Flint as being 26 feet in circumference, 
The sour gum or pepperidge (Nyssa sylvatica), usually a tree of 
veclmen near Success 
— 
swamps, was also of some importance, 
There were a number of plants which furnished useful sub- 
stances. Perhaps the best known of these is the bayberry or 
1 Rhodora 37: 133, 1935. 
