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POST OAK. 
GluERciis OBTUsiLOBA. folîîs sîriKatîs, subtus puhescentîbus, lobîs obtusîsy 
superioribus dilatatîs, bîlobis ; fructu mediocri ; glande brevi-ovatâ. 
Quercus stellata, Willd, Sp. PI. 
In New Jersey, near the sea, and in the vicinity of Philadelphia, this 
species is thinly disseminated in the forests, and has hitherto been consid- 
ered as a variety of the White Oak. In Maryland, and a great part of 
Virginia, where it abounds, and where its properties are better understood, 
it is called Box White Oak, and sometimes Iron Oak, and Post Oak. The 
last denomination only is used in the Carolinas, Georgia and East Ten- 
nessee. 
The steep banks of the Hudson, nearly opposite to the city of New 
York, are the most northern point at which 1 have observed it. Even 
here its existence seems to be secured only by the influence of the sea air, 
which tempers to a certain degree the severity of the winter. A little 
further inland it is not found in the forests. In the vicinity of South 
Amboy, thirty miles nearer the sea, where the soil is dry and sandy, it is 
more multiplied, and it becomes still more vigorous and more common in 
advancing towards the south. Westward, in Pennsylvania, I saw the last 
individual of this species a little beyond Carlisle on the road to Pittsburgh, 
150 miles from Philadelphia. Near Baltimore, at the distance of 210 
miles from New York, it abounds in the woods, and attains its utmost 
expansion. In Kentucky and Tennessee it is rare, except on the edges of 
the swamps enclosed in the forests, about which it is multiplied, though not 
fully developed. It probably exists in lower Louisiana, for we met with 
it in East Florida, of which the climate is the same. 
But it is nowhere more abundant than in Maryland and in Virginia, 
between the Alleghanies and the sea. Wherever the soil is dry, gravelly 
and unsubstantial, it forms a considerable proportion of the forests, which 
are composed principally of the Black, Scarlet, Spanish and Black Jack 
Oaks, the Dogwood and the yellow Pine. These woods exhibit a squalid 
appearance, occasioned not only by the sterility of the soil, but by the 
injury they are constantly sustaining from the cattle which range through 
them at all seasons, and which in winter are compelled, by the want of 
herbage, to subsist upon the young sprouts and the shoots of the preceding 
year. The upper part of the two Carolinas and Georgia, particularly 
