152 FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



tlie country from southern Maine to Iowa and Mis- 

 souri, and along the Alleghany Mountains to Georgia. 

 The young, flaky bark, and small, crooked branchlets 

 which are apt to hang from the heavy limbs of the 

 swamp white oak, make the identification of the tree 

 easy at all seasons. 



There is a small but symmetrical swamp white 

 oak near one of the little ponds in the Arnold Ar- 

 boretum, which is somewhat isolated and pictur- 

 esquely defined in the landscape over against the 

 north. One of the largest specimens of which a 

 record has been preserved grew on the Wadsworth 

 estate, one mile from the village of Geneseo, in the 

 western part of New York. The " Wadsworth oak," 

 as this tree was called, met with destruction several 

 years ago by the washing away of the bank of the 

 Genesee River. In 1851 the short trunk had an 

 average circumference of twenty-seven feet.* There 

 is also a very beautiful tree, 65 feet high, on the edge 

 of the water south of " Kame," in Waverly, Mass. 

 Basket or Cow Oak. The basket or COW oak, another of 

 Qmrcm MichauxU. i]^q chestnut oaks, gets its name from 

 the fact that its wood, which is easily split into thin 

 strips, is largely used for making baskets. It is a tree 

 which not infrequently attains a height of 100 feet. 



* Some Large Trees in Western New York. Buckley, American 

 Journal of Science, vol. xiii, p. 397. 



