178 



FOREST TREES. 



send up several shoots from a thick spreading scaly root-stock or stool 

 forming dense woody thickets. The Black Scrub Oak is of little value, 

 even for firewood, and here it is curious to observe that in all the Oaks, 

 those with dark foliage and bark, are of inferior value for fuel and 

 produce little potash. The housewives know this by experience ; the 

 green unseasoned Black Oak makes bad ashes for soap-making purposes 

 and is wretched burning wood unless thoroughly seasoned, while the 

 grey-barked Oaks burn well and yield more lye from the ashes. 



The Scrub Oaks are only found on comparatively light soil and 

 form one of the difficulties of clearing plain lands, as the roots possess 

 much vitality and the shoots must be cut down twice in the season for two 

 or three years successively. After the land has been chopped and the 

 brush burned — at the end of the third year — the exhausted stock ceases 

 to send up more sprouts ; and as they have no tap root and are very 

 superficially attached to the soil, these " Nigger-heads," as they are 

 commonly called, easily yield to the ploughshare and handspike, and are 

 then collected in heaps on the ground and burned, or brought home 

 and stacked in the wood-yard for fuel : they make a hot fire heaped on 

 the hearth, but are awkward and unwieldy for stove use. 



The farmers of the plains do not wait to till the soil and sow their grain 

 till the Oak roots are removed, but make such temporary clearings as 

 the rough condition of the ground admits of, and are content with small 

 returns for the first two or three years ; but after that they reaj:) good 

 crops of splendid grain, and soon have the satisfaction of seeing their 

 fields free from the unsightly stumps that remain so long an eye-sore in 

 the forest clearings ; the fields then present an Old World aspect to the 

 eye. 



The Orey Scrub Oak occupies the same localities with the Black 

 variety, yet, varies in bark, in foliage and size. It has been said that 

 the dwarfing of these Oaks arises from the fact that many years ago the 

 Indian hunters made a practice of burning over tracts of these plain- 

 lands, to promote the growth of the various grasses on which the Deer 

 fed, and by dwarfing the young growth of trees made better covert for 

 the wild game that sheltered there among the hills and ravines; but this 

 I think is doubtful. 



It would be difficult, now, to trace the fact from experience, for so 

 rapidly has the work of clearing the land and the conscciuent extermin- 

 ating of the underwood taken place, that in a very few years, not a 

 specimen of the native Scrub Oak will be found on the Rice Lake 

 Plains. For upwards of fifty years we know that no such process of 

 burning the ground over by the Indians has taken place, and there are 

 large timber trees here and there mingled with the Oak brush. These 



