TREES OF AMERICA. 23 



" Oh yes, Uncle Philip ; we read about 

 them in the i Tales from American History.' " 



" Then you know they are a very poor 

 people, and live chiefly on the rank flesh and 

 blubber of whales, and seals, and such oily 

 creatures. Well, a young Greenlander was 

 taken some years ago to Denmark, where he 

 was fed upon what we consider very nice 

 food, such as beef, and potatoes, and mutton, 

 and fish, and good wheaten bread ; and he 

 seemed to like all these things very well, too : 

 but one day he happened to find a large can 

 of lamp oil, and took a long draught of it, 

 saying, ( he wished he was in his own country 

 again, where he could get as much as he 

 pleased.' 



" What a strange taste !" 



" Yes, it seems strange to us, but it shows 

 what habit will do ; and so if you had been 

 eating acorns all your life, I dare say you 

 would think it as hard to have none, as the poor 

 Greenlander did when deprived of his whale oil. 

 In some of the Southern States, that is, Virginia, 

 North and South Carolina, and Georgia, there 

 is a kind of oak called the chincapin oak, 

 which is rather a shrub than a tree, for it 

 never grows more than seven or eight feet 



