AMERICAN FOREST TREES 273 



liquids are to be contained, but for barrels and kegs of many kinds, as 

 well as for boxes, baskets, and crates, it meets all requirements. It is 

 good fuel. Many burners of brick and pottery show it preference, and 

 charcoal burners make a clean sweep of it when it occurs in the course 

 of their operations; though when it is desirable to save the by-products 

 of charcoal kilns or retorts, yellow oak is considered less valuable than 

 birch, beech, and maple. 



The bark of this tree is employed less now than formerly for dyeing 

 purposes. Aniline dyes have taken its place. In pioneer times the 

 bark was one of the best coloring materials the people had, and every 

 family looked after its own supply as carefully as it provided sassafras 

 bark for tea, slippery elm bark for poultices, and witch hazel for gargles. 

 The oak bark was peeled, dried, and pounded to a powder. The mass 

 was sifted, and the yellow particles, being finer than the black bark, 

 passed through the screen, and were set apart for the dye kettle, while 

 the screenings were rejected. Various arts and sciences were called 

 into requisition to add to or take from the natural color which the bark 

 gave the cloth. Salts of iron were commonly employed to modify the 

 deepness of the yellow. 



The acorns of this oak are bitter, and escape the mast hunters. 

 Old stumps have little need to send up sprouts, for acorns keep the 

 species alive. Yellow oaks are in no immediate danger of extermination. 

 Nature plants generously, and the tree can get along on poor soil where 

 the farm hunter is not apt to molest it. It has a fairly thick bark, and is 

 able to take care of itself in a moderate fire, except when the seedlings 

 are quite small. The young tree's tap root is much developed, and goes 

 deep for moisture, and the growing sappling flourishes on ground where 

 some other species would suffer for water. 



WHITELEAF OAK (Quercus hypoleucd). The beauty of this small evergreen 

 oak of the mountains of western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, is in its foliage 

 rather than its wood. Large trunks that is, those twenty inches or more in diameter 

 are apt to be hollow, but the sound wood is employed in repairing wagons in local 

 shops, and in rough ranch timbers. Its importance will never extend beyond the 

 region where it grows, but in that region it will continue to be used where nothing 

 better can be obtained. The largest trees are sixty feet high, and two in diameter, 

 but few reach those dimensions. It is an arid land oak. It grows at from 4,000 to 

 6,000 feet elevations on mountains and plateaus. The leaves remain thirteen months 

 on the twigs. They are of the willow form, ranging from two to four inches in length 

 and one-half to one in width. The acorns are small and bitter. The strength of this 

 oak is remarkable, if it may be judged by the figures given by Sargent. Two samples 

 of wood procured by himself and Dr. Engelmann on a dry, gravelly ground among 

 the Santa Rita mountains in Arizona, showed breaking strength sixty-one per cent 

 greater than the average given by the same author for white oak. The stiffness of the 

 specimens was a little above white oak, and the weight three pounds more per cubic 



