450 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



counted on for fence posts, underpin- 

 ning, mudsills, dam timbers, and the 

 like. 



I once knew a young electrical engi- 

 neer who did not know or else disre- 

 garded this rule. There was a fine 

 stand of pin oaks and red oaks grow- 

 ing on his company's property, all 

 straight columnar trees and all of a 

 height. The land had to be cleared for 

 buildings, why not utilize these trees 

 for the electric light and telephone 

 poles of the plant? The older linemen 

 shook their heads, declaring that these 

 trees would soon rot and would be hard 

 to climb as poles, but it looked like a 



line work on heavy-power wiring far 

 exceeds the pole cost expense, a little 

 practical forestry knowledge would 

 have saved that engineer a lot of need- 

 less expenditure ! 



In these two groups then, we would 

 assemble, behind the white oak, the 

 swamp white oak, post oak, burr oak, 

 and chestnut oak, while behind the red 

 oak would gather the pin oak, scarlet, 

 black, scrub and black jack. Taking 

 the white oak family first, the head of 

 the clan, the white oak grows through- 

 out the range limits described in our 

 article and is almost universal in its soil 

 tastes. It succeeds admirably in moist, 



Fig. 64. Pin Oak. |Q. palusuis, D. Roi.) 



bargain to find three or four hundred 

 fine telegraph poles already growing on 

 the company's property, so they were all 

 cut down and carefully trimmed, peeled, 

 painted, and tarred for seven feet up 

 from the butt. They then went up as 

 the works electric light and power tele- 

 phone poles, but within three years from 

 that date every one of them had rotted 

 through just above the base and they 

 all had to come out. As the labor of 



Pig. 57. Chestnut Oak. (Q. prinos, L.) 



sandy loams, even if swampy part of 

 the year; it does equally well on clay 

 base, limestone base and granite base 

 soils and prefers, in any of these bases, 

 rich, well-drained ravine banks or creek 

 bottoms where the spring freshets bring 

 down quantities of silt. It will not 

 thrive in poor or dry soils of any kind, 

 nor in northerly latitudes where its Sep- 

 tember fall of acorns gets no chance to 

 sprout due to the early winter. If the 



