72 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



their white arms aloft till the trembling stars beyond seem 

 agitated! The bosomed owl also wakes, startling, the fiend- 

 ish, sardonic laugh preluding, they, too, cry unto their fel- 

 low a ghostly, chilling ciy. 



This tough and close-grained timber is principally devoted 

 to firewood, of fair quality; but on richer soils, with more 

 moisture, and so of rapid growth, and where not too hot, it 

 has attained some reputation in rural districts for imple- 

 ments of husbandry, etc.; e.g., it makes good spokes and fair 

 felloes, hubs, and axles, and for pump purposes, where great 

 tenacity is requisite with strength and stiffness; but being so 

 often associated with the Highland Live Oak (Q. Wislizdni), 

 this latter is apt to be preferred. / 



This hazy-blue Douglas Ghost Oak is perhaps most of all 

 trees laden with masses of mistletoe, i. e., along the belted 

 regions of the higher condensed, or grosser, recoiling, and 

 more humid malarial limits, to which we have elsewhere 

 alluded, and also more subject to diseases; better dwell 

 down deep in the fen than upon its borders, for the luke- 

 warm state of indeterminate stagnation is ever one of great- 

 est danger. The foliage abounds in galls and gall-spangles of 

 great variety, and some of brilliant beauty. The leaves have 

 not the fragrance of the Lobe-leaf California White Oak (Q. 

 lobata). The twigs and leaves in the young state are starry- 

 hairy ; stipules narrowed below and lance-formed above; 

 leaf stems exceedingly short, outline of blade reverse-egg- 

 form; base sharp, short-lobed, and spine-tip-toothed; the 

 starry-velvety hairs yellowish beneath and early shedding 

 from the upper surface, leaving it somewhat rough, and at 

 length frequently becoming nearly smooth and bluish. On 

 older trees leaves also oblong or oblong-oval, margins shal- 

 low-bayed, the lobes blunt, often almost obsolete; again saw- 

 toothed, or gash-lobes inclined forwards, apex blunt, and 

 sometimes base also. The soft blue bloom above has given 

 rise to one of the common names, Blue Mountain Oak, but 

 this is a misnomer, as the title " mountain," even of the third 

 class, only rightly applies to single elevations three to four 

 thousand feet high, rather than to collective elevations, for 

 these properly, and by common consent, are and should be 

 called " highlands;" hence, Blue Highland Oak is so happily 

 suggestive of that other blue-bonneted race — realm of the 

 rigorous virtues, the rural and the social, where poetry and 

 song still delight to linger, loth to leave, like good Lot of old, 

 the cities of the plain, catching the far off echoes as they 

 journey towards serener heights, 



" Where freedom wakes her mountain song." 



The texture of the leaves is parchment-like, size two to 



