174 Forests and Trees 



The oaks are the most celebrated and valuable of a well- 

 known and important family. They are trees of the northern 

 hemisphere, and with a few exceptions are confined to North 

 America. 



While America may have the greater number of species, still 

 the tree which made the oaks famous belongs to Europe. This is 

 the celebrated British oak (Q. robur). It is the oak of history, 

 poetry and myth. It constituted a considerable part of the 

 original forest, not only of Great Britain, but of all Europe 

 south of the Baltic Sea. For ages it has been regarded as the 

 type of rugged endurance, and thus a type of things British. 

 It was of it Ruskin was thinking when he wrote : 



"The ideal of the mountain oak may be anything, twisting and 

 leaning, and shattered, and rock-encumbered, so only that, amidst 

 all its misfortunes, it maintain the dignity of oak; and indeed, I 

 look upon this kind of tree as more ideal than the other, in so far as, 

 by its efforts and struggles, more of its nature, enduring power, 

 patience in waiting for and ingenuity in obtaining what it wants, is 

 brought out, and so more of the essence of oak exhibited than under 

 more fortunate conditions." 



"There is in trees no perfect form which can be fixed upon or 

 reasoned out as ideal ; but that is always an ideal oak which, however 

 poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, or tempest-tortured, is yet 

 seen to have done, under its appointed circumstances, all that could 

 be expected of oak." 



The wood of the oak has always been used wherever hard- 

 ness and endurance were desirable, but the diminishing supply 

 is now restricting it largely to inside finishing and furniture. 

 No wood resists water so well, and, when kept dry, it is practi- 

 cally indestructible. The bark is a valuable source of tannin, 

 and cork is the outer bark of a species of oak. 



They are essentially trees of the northern hemisphere, and 

 although Europe and northern Africa have furnished the earliest 

 and most widely known species, by far the greater number 



