OAKS OF PACIFIC SLOPE. .155 



Latest and most extensive of all is the "Sylva of Xorth America," 

 by Prof. C. S. Sargent. This is a series of twelve magnificent folio 

 volumes, which began to appear in 1891. The seventh volume, pub- 

 lished 1895, treats of the Cupuliferae, including the oaks. With elab- 

 orate descriptions and foot-notes of each species and ample illustrations 

 of the foliage, flowers, and fruit, these twelve ponderous volumes, com- 

 prising fill the American trees known, must long remain the most 

 valuable treatises upon the subject, a conspicuous and fitting monu- 

 ment to the industry, erudition, and perseverance of their author. 

 There was but a limited edition printed, the sets costing to universities 

 and public libraries twenty-five dollars per volume. Sargent describes 

 fifty species of oak, twenty-one of them in West America. 



Xo illustrations of entire trees or lower portions of tree trunks as 

 instructive in this as in the conifer family are given in any of the 

 works above cited. In time the public Avill demand a fully illustrated 

 work, especially of our western trees, at once a supreme delight to the 

 eye and affording a complete comprehension by the mind of the beauty 

 and value of these master products of the earth. 



The varying number of western oaks described in the twelve volumes 

 cited ranging from four species in Xuttall's Sylva to twenty-one in 

 Sargent's indicates not only the advance of discovery in forty years, 

 but also the varying number of characters deemed necessary for 

 specific rank by different botanists, some requiring more than others. 



In general, Professor Greene is very radical, often publishing new 

 species on a few characters, while Professor Sargent is conservative, 

 often uniting many forms under one general description. 



THE OAKS, A MEMORIAL FAMILY. 



The oaks may well be called the memorial family: no other genus 

 of plants of the same number of species has so many in it named for 

 persons. There is good reason for this. The species are so widely dis- 

 tributed through the north temperate regions, the very regions inhab- 

 ited by persons of appreciation, and they are usually so beautiful am : 

 long-lived, that they speedily become well known and great favorites; 

 hence, it is a high honor to have a species of oak named for one by a 

 fellow-botanist. 



The whole number of species of oak in the United States is forty- 

 three; the number named for persons (the discoverer or one who has 

 studied them closely) is fifteen. The number on the Pacific slope is 

 twenty-one, of which more than half (twelve) are memorial oaks. 



In the descriptions following (this being more a popular than a 

 scientific treatment of the subject), some attention is given to the dis- 



