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BLACK JACK OAK. 
Quercus ferruginea. Q. foliis coriaceîs, summitate dilatatis, retusosuhtri- 
lobis, basi retusis, subtus rubiginoso.pulverulentis ; cupulâ turbinatâ', squa- 
mis obiusis, scariosis ; glande brevi ovatâ. 
Quercus nigra, Willd. 
I observed this species for the first time in the forests near Allentown 
and Cranbery, small towns of New Jersey, about 60 miles east of Phila- 
delphia ; but it is smaller and less multiplied than farther south. In New 
Jersey and Philadelphia it is called Barrens Oak, and Black Jack Oak in 
Maryland and the more Southern States. I have adopted the last of these 
names only because it is the most generally used, and have changed the 
specific epithet nigra, because the name of the Black Oak is appropriated 
in the United States to the Quercus tinctoria. 
This species is commonly found upon soils composed of red argillaceous 
sand mingled with gravel, and so meager as to be totally exhausted by 
five or six crops, when they are thought worthy of cultivation. Unhappily, 
from Baltimore to the borders of North Carolina, an extent of four or five 
hundred miles, the greater part of Maryland and Virginia consists of this 
soil. The whole of this interval, with the exception of the valleys and the 
swamps with their surrounding acclivities, is covered with forests impover- 
ished by fire and the cattle that subsist in them during a great part of the 
year. They are composed principally of Yellow Pine, Post Oak, Black 
Oak and Scarlet Oak. In the Carolinas and Georgia, where the soil gra- 
dually improves in retiring from the shore towards the mountains, the same 
trees form a band 15 or 20 miles wide, between the pine-barrens and the 
forests of a more generous growth. In Kentucky and Tennessee, the 
Black Jack Oak is seen only in the savannas, where it is widely diffused, 
and where, preserved by the thickness of its bark and its insulated position 
it survives the conflagrations that almost every year consume the grass ; 
the fire, driven forward by the wind, has only time to devour its foliage. 
In pine-barrens it grows chiefly on the edges of the branch-swamps ^ 
where the soil is a little stronger than is necessary for the Pines. With 
the Upland Willow-Oak, and the Scrub Oak, it possesses itself of the pine 
lands that have been cleared for cultivation and abandoned on account of 
their sterility ; and in these situations it is larger than in the forests. 
The Black Jack Oak is sometimes 30 feet high and 8 or 10 inches in 
