308 EUROPEAN TREES. 
may perhaps be better adapted to this purpose than any of the 
pines of the New World, and it is of great importance for its 
turpentine, resin, and tar. The épicéa, or common fir, Adzes 
prcea, Abies excelsa, Picea excelsa, abundant in the mountains 
of France and the contiguous country, is known for its product, 
Burgundy pitch, and, as it flourishes in a greater variety of soil 
and climate than almost any other spike-leaved tree, it might 
be well worth transplantation.* The cork oak has been intro- 
duced into California and some other parts of the United 
States, I believe, and would undoubtedly thrive in the Southern 
section of the Union.t 
* This fir is remarkable for its tendency to cicatrize or heal over its stumps, 
a property which it possesses in common with some other firs, the maritime 
pine, and the European larch. When these trees grow in thick clumps, their 
roots are apt to unite by a species of natural grafting, and if one of them be 
felled, although its own proper rootlets die, the stump may continue, some- 
times for a century, to receive nourishment from the radicles of the surround- 
ing trees, and a dome of wood and bark of considerable thickness be formed 
over it. The healing is, however, only apparent, for the entire stump, except 
the outside ring of annual growth, soon dies, and even decays within its cover- 
ing, without sending out new shoots. See Monthly Report, Department of 
Agriculture, for October, 1872. 
+ At the age of twelve or fifteen years, the cork-tree is stripped of its outer 
bark for the first time. This first yield is of inferior quality, and is employed 
for floats for nets and buoys, or burnt for lampblack. After this, a new layer 
of cork, an inch or an inch and a quarter in thickness, is formed about once in 
ten years, and is removed in large sheets without injury to the tree, which 
lives‘a hundred and fifty years or more. According to Clavé (p. 252), the 
annual product of a forest of cork oaks is calculated at about 660 kilogrammes, 
worth 150 francs, to the hectare, which, deducting expenses, leaves a profit 
of 100 francs. This is about equal to 250 pound weight, and eight dollars 
profit to the acre. The cork oaks of the national domain in Algeria cover 
about 500,000 acres, and are let to individuals at rates which are expected, 
when the whole is rented, to yield to the state a revenue of about $2,000,000. 
George Sand, in the Histoire de ma Vie, speaks of the cork-forests in 
Southern France as among the most profitable of rural possessions, and states, 
what I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that Russia is the 
best customer for cork. The large sheets taken from the trees are slit into 
thin plates, and used to line the walls of apartments in that cold climate. On 
the cultivation and management of the cork oak, see Des Incendies et de la 
culture du Chene-liege, in Revue des Haux et Foréts for February, 1869. 
