10 REPORT ON THE TIMBERS OF THE NORTH 
various small streams that rise in Brush, Black, Pine, and 
Cumberland mountains, and flow into Cumberland river, I 
-have never seen a single hemlock more than one hundred 
barometric feet above local drainage, except in one spot. 
That was shortly after crossing the Harlan county line in as- 
cending the Cumberland, where I found some hemlock trees 
on top of the bluff, that here rises precipitately from the 
river to a height of two hundred feet. But even in this 
case, although the ‘trees are two hundred barometric feet 
above the river, on the opposite side of the hemlock from 
the river is a considerable depression, through which a branch 
runs most, if not all, of the year; so that this is not strictly 
an exception to the statement that I never saw a hemlock, 
in this part of Kentucky, growing more than one hundred 
feet above local drainage. So far as my observation extends, 
therefore, the presence of a hemlock tree in Kentucky proves 
two things: Conglomerate formation, and water, present part 
of the year at least, within one hundred barometric feet. 
The last peculiarity of growth that I shall notice ‘here, is 
that of the white oak. Ina former report on the timbers of 
some parts of Western Kentucky (volume II, page 339) I 
mentioned the want of hardihood in the white oak, inferred 
from the fact that Spanish oak, red oak, pin oak, etc., when 
left to free competition with the white oak, in the course of 
time choke it out and supplant it. In Eastern Kentucky, 
where the mountains are sufficiently high for exposure to dif- 
ferent points of the compass to preduce.a marked effect on 
the timbers, I found a confirmation of my former opinion in 
regard to the comparative sensitiveness of the white oak. In 
making a section across Black Mountain, along what is called 
Hall’s branch, not far from the Harlan county line, the hills 
on either side of the hollow are quite steep and high, and 
form a synclinal, one face of which is exposed to the north, 
the other to the south. The formation and soil of the two 
faces were exactly the same, so far as I could see, and both 
were heavily timbered. But on the hillside exposed to the 
south about forty-five per cent. of the whole timber was of 
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