34 



along beside it toward the Mall. Let us follow the 

 right fork for awhile and then take the left from this 

 point. 



Not quite half way to the next fork (the one that 

 slips away under an Arch to the Arsenal) you will see, 

 on your right, as you go southerly, a fine, healthy red 

 oak. You can know it by its bristle-tipped, oval or 

 oblong leaves. The leaves are cut deeply into pin- 

 natified lobes. The red oak's buds are distinctive, too, 

 clean cut and glossy red in winter. Diagonally across 

 from it, well up on the bank, with broad, outcast arms 

 and a noble trunk, stands a flourishing English oak. 

 It stands in the bend of the left hand border of the 

 Walk, and you can tell it at once by its broadly oval 

 leaves slightly lobed and distinctly eared at the base, 

 about the leaf stem, where they seem about to clasp 

 the petiole. Its acorn is certainly beautiful, a polished 

 olive-green, over an inch long and about a third en- 

 closed in a clean, hemispherical cup. Directly oppo- 

 site the path leading under the Arch here is a fine 

 mass of the staghorn sumac, filling in the bank between 

 the Walk and the water. It is a well-grown mass, with 

 branching antlers of sweeping fronds that blaze a 

 glory of crimson and scarlet and gold in the autumn. 



Here, before we continue southwards, let us turn 

 off to the left, and pass through the Arch which leads 

 the path northeasterly from the handsome clump of 

 sumac, under the Drive, towards the Arsenal. 



On going through the Arch, you will come on your 

 left, after passing a fine bush of the sweet syringa, 

 to a very interesting shrub with dark-green leaves 



