136 TREE ANCESTORS 



mature their acoms in a single season, and others, like the black 

 and red oaks require two years to mature their fruit. The pollen 

 bearing flowers are minute and are borne singly on thread-like 

 pendulous stalks in tassels from the twigs of the previous year. 

 The seed bearing flowers are separate from those which produce 

 the pollen and are also minute, being borne singly or in clusters 

 from the bases of the young growing leaves of the spring. The 

 pollen is brought to the ovulate flowers through the agency of the 

 wind, and the mature acoms are disseminated by being carried by 

 streams, to a slight extent being blown about by winds, and largely 

 through the agency of mammals such as squirrels, or birds. On 

 the whole they spread much more slowly than do the seeds of trees 

 which have winged fruits like so many of our forest trees. 



There is but slight need to take the space to eulogize the virtues 

 of oak timber, which have been recognized for ages. The different 

 species exhibit great diff^erences, however, which lumber dealers 

 are somewhat prone to overlook. Governments once maintained 

 reserves of live oak timber for ship building purposes as today they 

 maintain oil reserves. Cheap oak furniture consumes large quanti- 

 ties of the wood at all times, and the better grades vary with the 

 fashions for flemish, golden, antique and other classes of finish or 

 period furniture. Much oak goes into the better grades of flooring 

 and interior finish, and this inventory merely hints at the variety 

 of uses and the great annual consumption of oak wood for these and 

 for tanning, milling, vehicle and other purposes. 



The oaks are characterized by the sub-epidermal development 

 of cork in their stems, and this tendency becomes excessive and the 

 basis of an industry in the case of the cork oak, Quercus suber 

 and its varieties. This tree of southern Europe and northern 

 Africa has been utilized for at least the last two thousand years 

 exactly as it is at the present time. Camillus is said to have worn 

 a cork life preserver when he swam the Tiber during the siege of 

 Rome by the Gauls. The gall oak, Quercus infectoria, like all the 

 other oaks produces, but more abundantly, the tumors due to 

 insect injuries, and known as galls, and these have entered ex- 

 tensively into the manufacture of black ink — less largely in recent 



