INTRODUCTORY. 



The Oaks, for which as a genus of trees and shrubs, botanists continue to use the 

 classical Latin name Qiiercus, are all easily recognized by that particular kind of nut-like 

 fruit which they bear, and which is called, in our language, an acorn. 



Every one knows that a certain kind of rounded or egg-shaped or cylindrically elon- 

 gated thin-shelled nut, the base of which is seated in a scaly or tubercled cup of circular 

 outline, is an acorn; and whatever tree or bush which produces acorns is an Oak. 



.For the present purpose, no more technical or minute diagnosis of the genus is de- 

 manded. 



At least three hundred kinds of Oak are now known to botanists. About fifty of these 

 are indigenous to North America north of Mexico. The two hundred and fifty others are 

 distributed between the Mexican region of North America and the northern hemisphere of 

 the Old World; and no single species is common to the Old World and the New. 



The fifty North American species are about equally divided between the eastern and 

 the western sides of the continent; and there is no Oak common to Atlantic and Pacific 

 America. 



The greater part of the species belonging to the Pacific states and territories were 

 more or less fully illustrated by Dr. Kellogg's pencil. The twenty-four different drawings 

 of his herein published represent all the more important species of the extensive common- 

 wealth of California particularly, as well as several others the interest in which is mainly 

 phytographical; and the editing of these plates has resulted in a virtual monograph of the 

 Pacific North American Oaks. Descriptions of three or four new species or varieties have 

 been interpolated at suitable places in the text of the plates, and some account of the 

 other unfigured species is given at the end; so that the volume may be found to contain 

 about all which, up to this date, is known of our West American Oaks. 



The work is nevertheless in important respects only tentative. The plates alone, as 

 far as they go, are of lasting value. The engraver has been scrupulously faithful to the 

 drawings; and no artist was ever more strictly and conscientiously true to nature than 

 Dr. Kellogg. Most of the Oaks which he drew have long been well known by name and 



