VOL. XXXIV. No. 13. ) 
WHOLE No. 1391. f 
NEW YORK CITY, SEIT. 23, 1876. 
(PRICE SXX CENTS 
1 S2.50 PER YEAR. 
lEnterea according to Act of Congr^ 
ess, in the year 1876, by the Rural Publishing Company, in the office of the Librarian of Co 
ngress at Washington. j 
I^rkrirtilitiral, 
BY THOMAS MEEHAN. 
I HAVE made the Oak family a special study, 
and from the experience and knowledge thus ac- 
quired, I do not hesitate to say that the lover of 
would have more satisfaction in growing 
Oaks other class. Some 
have hesitated trees because of an 
idea that they are difficult ^(9 This 
is true of a tree that has never been mo^’^.- 
take an Oak from the wild wood to the garden is 
surely labor thrown away. Oaks have each a 
large tap-root and a few main roots that run 
rather deep. If these are cut off when the tree 
is but a year or two old, the tree makes a new 
set, and these latter keep tolerably near the sur- 
face. In the course of a few years, however, 
they assume a downward tendency, and ought to 
be again transplanted. 
A good nursery Oak tree should be transplanted 
twic# — once wffien one or 
two years old, and again 
when five or six. Such 
trees never die when trans- 
planted under ordinary cir- 
cumstances. I have seen 
hundreds moved, after such 
previous treatment, that 
were at least 12 feet high 
and 9 to 12 inches in cir- 
cumference, with no more 
loss than if they had been 
willows or poplars and but 
6 or 8 feet in bight. Two 
years ago I saw over a thou- 
sand planted with a loss of 
less than five per cent. 
In transplanting all trees 
a little pruning is neces- 
sary, and to the Oak espe- 
cially is the use of the 
pruning-knife very grateful. 
But a proper discrimination 
should be made as to what 
you cut away. Usually 
people simply “ shorten the 
branches.” I have seen 
them cut so that they were 
but stumps, with half a 
dozen snags — ^mere posts for 
clothes-lines. 
The common people, who 
who are supposed to have 
little horticultural sense, 
say they may as well get a 
smaU tree as pay for a large 
one and then cut it back to 
stump. And I guess they 
are right, as there is no oc- 
casion for it. It is bad 
pruning in science as well 
as in practice. Good prun- 
ing leaves all the solid, vig- 
orous branches and cuts 
away only the weaker ones. 
It is these sickly, delicate 
things that always die first 
in a pinch, any how, and 
when we are going to have 
a fight with Nature, as we 
do when we transplant, the 
sooner we clear the field of 
aU sickly soldiers the better 
it will be for the rest. Let 
any one try this in trans- 
planting and he will find it 
literally as well as figura- 
tively true. Some people 
object to meddling with 
Oaks because they grow slow. They say they 
will not live to see tfees of them. Now, it is 
rather the other way. 
Most of the Oaks are rather rapid growers. 
True, they do not grow with the briskness of a 
willow or a poplar, or the HeHniniera of Africa, 
which will increase its diameter four inches a 
year ; but I know of numerous cases, and in dif- 
ferent species, where the diameter of the Oak 
has increased three-quarters of an inch in a 
year, and not under specially favored circum- 
stances either. I have cut many a branch from 
an eight or ten-year old tree that has given four 
and five feet of growth as its season’s work. 
I once made a dozen first-class hitching-posts 
out of an Oak tree but twelve years old, and 
} >ad to cut away because of a new street. 
Surely thS^ ^Jpwth enough to satisfy any 
reasonable creature. irPP was of a foreign 
species, however, the Quercus fdbWf 9¥ Royal 
Oak, which the English teU us has “ borne f©r 
a thousand years the battle and the breeze,” 
though I presume not growing at this rate aU 
the time throughout the centuries. 
Now, I am not much of a materialist. I love 
money, perhaps, some, but I prefer to have with 
it some of the spiritual enjoyments of life, 
have some trees on my property no money could 
buy. They seem friends of mine. There are 
among them Cedars, Tulips, Chestnuts, Gums, 
Sassafras and Oaks, and many a time have they 
entertained both me and mine. 
I fancy there are thousands who, like me, look 
up to some tree as to a part of themselves, and 
who would indignantly spurn the thirty pieces of 
silver offered to betray it. But there are other 
trees and other aspects, and I never feel so much 
like going West and making money as when 
I look upon my young Oaks and note how freely 
they grow. There is no timber to equal that of 
the Oak for certain purposes. Ask any railroad 
man, any fence - maker, any bridge-buUder, any 
maker of a “barrack ” or other farm building— 
they all place the Oak above and far in advance 
of other woods. Ask British shipbuilders as to 
its value in the construction of ships, and they 
will tell yon of its lasting qualities and point en- 
thusiastically to their old, wooden walls of Oak 
in proof oi what they say. It is indeed the Oak 
which hast nade England the great nation she 
to-day. 
A plantation of Oak in the West would be 
OR ROYAlJL. OA-R, 
fortune to any man, and he could turn the for- 
tune over a dozen times in a| lifetime, for Oaks 
become profitable very soon. I should plant 
them about as far apart and in the same manner 
as corn, so that for the first two or three years 
they could be hoe-harrowed like com, to keep 
the weeds down. 
The first thinning might then commence, and 
the product be turned to account for “ straps ” 
for hoops and boxes, for which there is always a 
good demand ; and for some years afterward, in 
ways which are hardly necessary to specify, there 
is an annual use to which the thinning can be 
applied. In about ten years the acorns appear, 
and then the mast is of value in feeding hogs 
and turkeys, and long before we know it the real 
timber is there ! I am quite sure that if I had 
160 acres of land in a prairie country, I would 
put at least 10 acres of it in Oak timber, feeling 
perfectly satisfied that long— yes, Zon^— before I 
should grow gray, if I were as young as I once 
was, I would make more out of the land in that 
way than I should out of any other part of the 
farm. 
Of varieties for rapid timber growth, I incline 
the opinion that the English is the best, not- 
withetandingr my I'cs'ard for 
species of our own land. 
I believe grow into 
money faster and tfee 
timber is at least as good as 
any in this country,Live Oak 
not excepted, and then for 
the purpose of hog feeding 
none can come near it. It 
bears young and abundant- 
ly, and every year. 
For timber purposes, of 
the hardy kinds of our own 
species adapted to cold cli- 
mates the White Oak is 
good ; so is the Chestnut 
Oak ; next I should place 
the Black, Scarlet and Red 
Oaks. The bark of the 
Black and Chestnut Oaks 
is valuable for tanners’ use, 
for after all the substitutes 
for bark in tanning and the 
4 per cent, of tannin found 
in Sumac, Polypodium am- 
phibium, and other things, 
I doubt whether most tan- 
ners would not prefer good 
old Oak bark. At any rate, 
while we are growing good 
oak timber, we are making 
bark also, whereas in most 
of the substitutes the whole 
growth is useless, except for 
the percentage of tannic 
acid they contain. 
Passing now from the Oak 
as an aid to the physical 
wants of man, I may say a 
few words for the benefit of 
those who take an intellect- 
ual enjoyment in knowledge 
for its own self. There are 
about 300 different species 
of Oak known.' A few of 
them are natives of Europe, 
but are more abundant in 
the United States. The 
Oaks of the latter country, 
however, have not much in 
common with the European 
species. The Japanese Oaks, 
on the other hand, bear a 
close affinity to those of 
the Eastern United States. 
When we get to the Rocky 
Mountains we find Qu&rcui 
undulata, and here we 
the first near approach ^ 
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