70 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



tree. Evelyn says of the two men who cut down the Vicar's 

 Oak in Surrey, England: that one lost his eye and the other 

 broke his leg soon after. Should like to know what evil 

 befel those godless miners who destroyed that majestic oak, 

 over eleven feet in diameter, that gave name and renown to 

 Big Oak Flat. One thing we do know, such irreverent and 

 reckless disregard of God's best gift, has in potency, a wicked 

 and heartless principle that forever tends to ill luck, could 

 never prosper long, either in this sphere of life or that other 

 beyond the river Styx. What marvel of multitudes, apart 

 from man, beasts of every kind, birds of every wing, creeping 

 or flying thing, crypt of every hue, from green and gray, dim 

 and dark, red and blue, black or white, altogether throng 

 the cherishing and useful oaks; and not the least of these,, 

 the busy bee that literally swarms the trees in summer and 

 autumn to gather honey, not alone from flowers or honey 

 dewed leaf, but mostly the bud that oozes its wine-colored 

 nectar drops. 



BLUE DOUGLAS OAK. 



(Quereus Douglasii.) 



"Where, twisted round the barren oak, 

 The Summer vine in beauty clung." 



— Longfellow. 



r~I^VHIS deciduous Blue Oak abounds on extensive park- 

 like terrace-plains and foot-hills, or from coast to up- 

 wards of three thousand feet; is often rather small or 

 only a middle sized tree, say forty to sixty, rarely seventy- 

 five feet high ; one and a half to three or four feet and more, 

 rarely seven feet, in diameter. Let it be understood, most of 

 our trees sport not only extremes in size, but wonderful va- 

 riations of form, after their kind. These oaks, in the main,, 

 are of the low, mostly round-top old apple orchard type; 

 and while live oaks often tend to keep up this latter illusion, 

 this oak is only thus remotely suggestive, in the general 

 view, at a distance; for the very white, almost white-washed 

 bark, and pale, hazy-bluish foliage, soon disperses the 

 charm; closely inspected, the body is seen handsomely 

 and rather finely chinky, chiefly on the vertical-fissure plan, 

 but the converging and diverging water lines are not very 

 deep, for the bark itself is thin, nor widely gaping, like Q. 

 lobata, but are more finely distributed and not so often trans- 

 versely parted, consequently the bark sections not so cuboid. 

 These trees are usually scattered, and anon grouped, or 



