18 ON THE TIMBER LANDS TRAVERSED BY A 
course, in the following pages, the usual botanical classifica- 
tions have been made, as a matter of convenience. 
There is an oak found near streams, and in rich woods and 
glens in Kentucky, which cannot be classed, according to the 
distinctions now in use, as a variety of red oak, nor as a 
dwarf oak, nor as a Quercus lyrata. It resembles Q. macro-: 
carpa more than any other oak, perhaps, except that the 
leaves are not downy or tomentose beneath; but, on the 
contrary, are a dark, rich, smooth green, and are shining like 
the leaves of Q. lyrata. I have called it vzch red oak, and 
have classified it as macrocarpa. 
There is another oak, called by the people chinquapin oak, 
and which I have classed as Q. prinozdes, on account of its 
very great resemblance to chinquapin oak, but which often 
grows fifty feet high in the mountains of Kentucky. There is 
also in the mountains a low, rich green oak, the bark of which 
is darkish to whitish gray, with long, straight, shallow furrows 
at the base of the tree, growing more deep and chipped up 
the stem; branches smooth, gray, with brownish rough spots 
or dots; acorn broader than long, dorsally compressed, and 
one fourth buried in a brittle, scaly, flat cup. The leaf lobes 
aré 7, 9, 11 in. number, and-are’ awned. The: little (recuae 
very rich in fruit. I have called it Q. z/czfofza, on account of 
its great resemblance to that species, though it differs from it 
in some respects. 
TIMBER IN DETAIL. 
A mere running sketch of the Purchase country and its 
timbers will be given here, because a special report on the 
timbers of this section has been prepared and published, to 
which the reader is referred for more detailed information. 
(See Report on Purchase Timbers, volume V, this series.) 
In going eastward from Columbus, on the Mississippi, no 
timbers worthy of special mention are met with for some 
miles. The old forests have been cut away. About one 
-and one quarter miles out the country is rolling, the soil 
white-sandy and damp, with large white oak and liriodendron 
188 
