Il. 1. THER ROCK CHESTNUT OAK. 139 
When the trees are cut young, the stumps throw up shoots, 
of four feet or more in length, the first year. 
This beautiful tree has many claims to attention. It is, ac- 
cording to the uniform testimony of those who have tried it as 
fuel, superior, for that purpose, to any other oak which will 
grow in the same situation, and it is generally considered supe- 
rior to every other wood. Mr. Bull's experiments would lead 
to a different conclusion, as he makes its value less than that 
of most other oaks. 
As timber, it ranks, with many, next to the white oak. It is 
doubtless very valuable, but not more so than either of the pre- 
ceding oaks. 
The bark, wherever it has been used, is highly esteemed by 
fanners. 
The acorns, which it produces as scantily and as rarely as 
either of the preceding, are large and very sweet. 
But the chief recommendation of the rock chestnut oak, is 
the situation in which it grows. It grows naturally and flour- 
ishes on the steep sides of rocky hills. where few other trees 
thrive, and where the other kinds of oak can hardly get a foot- 
hold. There are. probably. thousands of acres of inlly. rocky 
land, i almost every county in Massachusetts, where various 
kinds of evergreens have grown, unmixed with deciduous trees, 
until they have exhausted all the nutriment suited to their sup- 
port, and where now, consequently, nothing thrives, which 
would furnish abundant support for this kind of oak. 
It is well known, that successive growths of trees of the same 
family exhaust the soil, in the same manner as successive crops 
of annual or other herbaceous plants of the same kind. And 
they not only exhaust it, but are supposed to fill it with excre- 
mentitious matter, which is in a manner poisonous to analogous 
plants. ‘The remedy, in cultivated lands, is a rotation of crops. 
The same suggests itself in the forest; and, whenever it can 
take place, a rotation is established by nature. But where no 
seed, of a kind entirely unlike that which has grown upon the 
soil, is found, unassisted nature cannot supply the want. In 
such cases, the art of man may come in with advantage. There 
is every reason to believe, that if acorns of the oak of which 
