THE NATIVE TREES OF RHODE ISLAND. 
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It is smooth-barked, clean, and rarely injured by insects. It is 
irregular in fruit-bearing, but the three-cornered nuts are edible, 
and highly prized by boys and squirrels. Swine are very fond of 
the nuts, and the beech woods of England were formerly much 
prized as feeding-ground for stock of that kind. Beech wood 
comes close to maple as fuel, but chairs, tools, and the like, take 
most of the logs. A beech forest with its tall, columnar boles, 
crowned by canopied foliage, admitting only glintings of sunlight, 
is one of nature’s triumphs of sylvan beauty. 
The “ water” beech is not a beech, but the true “hornbeam,” as 
the horny, compact, exceedingly tough wood of the tree testifies. 
The term beech has been applied from the resemblance of its bark 
and leaves to those of the real beech ; and the fact of its growing 
near the water explains the other term. The tree growing usually 
with others which crowd upon it, does not have chance for show- 
ing its beauty. The column and limbs are fluted or ridged, and 
the branches end in spray-like twigs. It is a rare tree but little 
known. 
The Chestnut. 
The rocky ridges and much of the high level grounds of this 
State are the natural home of the American chestnut tree. On 
ground suited for it, the tree easily gets ahead of all others which 
might grow ; so it often occupies large areas, almost to the exclu- 
sion of other trees. This tree comes to timber size more quickly 
than any other native tree, unless it be the white pine. It is a 
model forest tree — tall, straight, slightly tapering, with a small 
top for so. much body. The durability of the wood wlien used for 
sill or post work, for railroad ties, and the like, will always keep 
up a demand for a young growth of the tree. For cheap furniture 
and furnishings, too, it is one of the most available woods we have. 
As an edible nut-bearing tree it is rapidly gaining in impor- 
tance. The improving of the American chestnut by propagating 
from the best nuts found native, is already a success. A nut-bear- 
ing chestnut orchard can be reared about as quickly as an apple 
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