284 Next to the Ground 



in the darker color of its bark and the fact 

 that its leaves are green in spring and turn 

 yellow in the fall, splits easily, once you 

 have it started, and w^ith a perfectly true 

 cleavage, although it owns the solidest, closest- 

 grained timber of them all. 



Red oak bark stands next to chestnut oak 

 for tanning. It is also good for dyeing, 

 furnishing either a reddish tan color, or a 

 smoky-gray, according to whether the dye is 

 set with copperas or alum. The inner bark 

 infused in cold water, is the sovereign'st thing 

 for sore throats, besides a fine tonic. As 

 to the timber the name of its uses is legion. 

 It furnishes rails without number, house 

 logs, sills, plates, beams, boards, staves, barn 

 wood and firewood without end. Red oak 

 is truly the bone and sinew of the woodlands. 

 A health and good luck to him who either 

 plants it or spares what is self-planted. 



Turkey oak is, after a sort, the red oak's 

 country cousin, full of family likeness, but 

 rougher as to bark and stems and leaves, 

 also coarser as to timber, and addicted to 

 warty gnarls of a size and ugliness no well- 

 bred oak should cherish. In the sapling stage, 

 its leaves are particularly ill-lobed. That is 

 however, true of all except Spanish oak sap- 

 lings. A sapling, by the way, gets its name 

 from the fact that it is still all sapwood, too 



