14 WEST AMERICAN OAKS. 



Remarks. The timber of this oak is of little value for mechanical purposes; that of 

 young and thrifty trees only being found tough and durable. That of the older and full- 

 grown specimens is brittle and unserviceable except for fuel. Of its large acorns it is very 

 prolific, and appears to have been the principal bread-tree of the California aborigines. 

 Several of the early travelers have testified to this. General Fremont in describing the 

 country along the Stanislaus river, as it appeared in 1846, g^ves the following account of 

 this oak: 



" The river valley was about forty feet below the upland, and the stream seventy 

 yards broad, making the usual fertile bottoms, which here were covered with green grass 

 among large oaks. We encamped in one of these bottoms, in a grove of the large white 

 oaks previously mentioned as Querais hngiglanda (Torr. & Frem.) This oak is a new 

 species, belonging to the division of white oaks distinguished by the length of its acorn, 

 which is commonly an inch and a half, and sometimes two inches. * * The tree 



attains frequently a diameter of six feet and a height of eighty feet, with a wide spreading 

 head. The many varieties of deciduous and evergreen oaks, which predominate through- 

 out the valleys and lower hills of the mountains, afibrd large quantities of acorns, which 

 constitutes the principal food of the Indians of that region. Their great abundance in 

 the midst of fine pasture lands must make them an important element in the agri- 

 cultural economy of the country." ' 



Professsor Newberry, in one of the volumes of the Pacific Railroad Survey Reports, 

 has given so excellent an account of this tree and its uses that the passages deserve a 

 reprint here. In speaking of a belt of them which, in 1855, were found bordering Cache 

 Creek, he says : ' 



" This timber belt is composed of the most magnificent oaks I have ever seen. They 

 are not crowded as in our [East American] forests, but grow scattered about singly or in 

 groups with open, grass-covered glades between them. The trunks, often seven feet in 

 diameter, soon divide into branches, which spread over an area of which the diameter is 

 considerably greater than the height of the tree. There is no undergrowth beneath them, 

 and as far as the eye can reach, when standing among them, an unending series of great 

 trunks is seen rising from the lawn-like surface. 



The wood of this tree, like that of most of the deciduous trees of California, is porous 

 and brittle, resembling in its want of tenacity that of the black oak, Q. tinctoria^ of the 

 East. This I infer to be due to the climatal conditions under which it is found, rather 

 than to any inherent botanical peculiarity of the tree ; as from its affinity with the white 

 oak of the Eastern States, if grown in the same soil and climate the wood, in all probability, 

 would exhibit a similar character. 



'Frem. Geogr. Mem. of Upper Calif., p. 17. ' 



