308 EFFECTS OF TREATING 



cultivated, and that may be true, for the very 

 same circumstances which led to the wrong mode 

 of treatment may have led to the using of the 

 wrong plant. The collector of acorns would na- 

 turally proceed upon the joint principles of " the 

 most easily obtained and the most saleable." I 

 do not know that it is in all cases a positive fact, 

 that the worst kinds of oak are the most prolific 

 of acorns ; but it is a sort of generally-observed 

 law among vegetables, that where there is a great 

 deal of fruit, the wood is soft and perishable. 

 And that has reason on its side; trees do not 

 work miracles any more than men do ; and, there- 

 fore, if its action is more turned in any particular 

 direction, it must be less in any other. Fruit trees 

 are often killed in the wood, by excessive bearing; 

 and, therefore, it is natural to suppose that a 

 similar excess must injure the wood of an oak. 

 Now, it generally happens that, in the same spe- 

 cies, whether in the same or in different varieties 

 of the same species, the productions run largest 

 when they are most numerous. Hence the acorns 

 of the oak having the inferior timber, are the 

 most profitable for the gatherer both to gather 

 and to sell; and those two circumstances are quite 

 sufficient to bring them to the market in prefer- 

 ence to, and even exclusive of the other, more 

 especially as the purchaser is to grow seedlings 

 and not oak timber. The question of the timber 

 is, indeed, a question seventy years hence with 

 those who deal in acorns and seedling oaks, 

 and as they have small chance of hearing any 

 complaint that may be made about the quality, 

 they of course give themselves very little concern 

 about it. 



But still granting that the acorns are those of an 



