88 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



little streamlets, if rains be scant or too tardy. The jay and 

 the woodpecker make shallow conic holes in the bark of 

 trees, driving in strongly the sharp end to prevent the germ 

 from swelling, and so ultimately sprouting, to his or their 

 loss. The water lines are rain guides that soak and lave the 

 porous base, and so prepare their "Winter stores for use as 

 well. The bee sucks honey from the buds, leaves, and cups 

 as well as the flowers. 



Many thousands' of acres of this tan-bark Chestnut Oak, 

 as it is often called, are annually doomed to wasteful 

 destruction by a well known perversion of the land-locating 

 law. "Frame houses" — forgive the scandal — or are they 

 only the disordered phantoms of dreaming madmen? Four 

 posts, or poles, trans-rails, no- roof, no door, no window, no 

 floor! These are the ghosts of houses that confront you at 

 every turn along the coast, and serve to hold one hundred 

 and sixty or more acres of land — i. e., stool-pigeon timber 

 claims, or land, timber, bark, and all. Dismantled of tim- 

 ber, bark stripped off, etc., then the "claim" is lifted for 

 another, and so on ad infinitum, or until waste and devasta- 

 tion mark their path, with none to stay the wanton destroyer. 

 "Were the valuable timber utilized in any way, even by porta- 

 ble mills for staves or the like, there would be more apology 

 to offer in the sight of God and man. Cut in the sap, prone 

 on the damp ground, in five to eight years they utterly decay. 

 They would certainly make dry barrels, and such boxes as 

 communicate no disagreeable taste or odor to their contents. 

 In some instances its timber has proven a marvel of tough- 

 ness and elasticity. Well chosen and thoroughly prepared, 

 it makes good felloes. 



May their perfect shadows never be less; shadows never 

 damp and chilly, as some we wot of, but pleasantly warm 

 and dry. We have before alluded to oaken odors as emi- 

 nently salubrious, and when their shadows also are of the 

 beneficent and safely refreshing sort, like this, they com- 

 mend themselves to the ruralist from all points of view. 

 Better breathe the health-inspiring odor of the old open tan- 

 yard itself, than the close consumptive airs "where people 

 most do congregate." Together with the wide range of this 

 evergreen oak, let us keep constantly in mind the fact, as 

 eminently peculiar to California trees in general, from being 

 one to two hundred feet high, they may and do dwindle 

 down to barely tiny bushes in full bearing, aping their bet- 

 ters, though old enough to have lost all their teeth, and still 

 the leaves rigid, thick, and varnished, as near the north and 

 northwest base of Mount Shasta, at Soda Springs, as Hon. 

 B. B. Redding's recent specimens fully show. The incal- 

 culable use of its leaves as food for silkworms, of oak-eating 

 species, will be further alluded to elsewhere. 



