PARK AND CEMETERY. 
33 
imagine for a moment, those dear, familiar eyes 
filled with wistful longing — longing for some piti- 
ful privileges of sunshine, sand and space, our 
hearts throb with sympathy tor the army of little 
ones we have always with us, and (each in his or 
her own way) we make some new resolves — re- 
solves that fetch their blessings to us, in the present 
and zvill bestow their blessings upon others in the 
future. 
THE LIVE OAK. (Quercus Americana.) 
The oak is the grandest tree of the forest. 
From the days of Abraham who sat, in the heat of 
the day, under the ‘ ‘Oak of Mamre,” to the Greeks, 
who held it sacred, the Romans, who dedicated it 
to Jupiter and the Druids, who worshiped under its 
shade, the oak has been king of the forest. 
Quercus Americana, the live oak, in historic in- 
terest exceeds all of its 
own class as well as all 
other native trees of the 
United States. Making 
allowance for individual 
tastes regarding trees, 
which since Xerxes encir- 
cled the plane or Sycamore 
trees of Lycia to show 
his partiality, tastes have 
differed; yet no one dis- 
putes the supremacy of 
the oak in the American 
forests. The live oak is 
the most striking in ap- 
pearance from its majestic 
size and evergreen foli- 
age. 
It is a matter of history 
that the United States 
owes its naval victories, 
in the war of 1812, to the 
live oaks, out of whose gnarled trunks and limbs 
the war vessels were made. Naturally the limbs 
are at all angles from the trunk, and are gnarled, 
curved and turned, as well as perfectly straight, so 
the bows, keels, ribs, floors and all parts of the ship, 
except the masts were constructed of them, without 
altering the shape. The ready adaptability of the 
timbers for ship building created such heavy de- 
mands for the trees, that destruction threatened the 
magnificent groves. For such reasons the govern- 
ment reserved for its own use, such lands as wefe 
the locality of the great numbers of gigantic live 
oaks. Also the government reserved the indivi- 
dual trees on all its lands, whether for homesteads, 
or sold in tracts bordering on the coast. 
The reservation of the live oaks has been abro- 
gated since 1890. The governor of Mississippi, 
during that year, took the thirty-six sections do- 
nated to the State Industrial College, by Congress, 
out of the reserved tract on the Gulf coast in Mis- 
sissippi. Probably there are no other trees in our 
country that have been protected as wards under 
the guardianship of the government. 
The royal splendor of the live oak trees and 
their tropical luxuriance are but rendered conspic- 
uous by direct contrast with the pine, cedar, mag- 
nolia, cypress, red and white oak and other fine 
trees. The pine, far and away, towers above the 
live oak and the magnolia grandiflora is a close 
rival that contests every claim to grandeur and 
beauty, yet in the felicitous whole, with its knotted, 
curved and angled branches, spreading in appar- 
ently eccentric, yet really very symmetrical form. 
THE MARTHA WASHINGTON O.AK, .AUDUBON P.ARK, NEW ORI.EANS, I.A. 
the live oak is the “noblest Roman of them all.’’ 
The limbs spread laterally, tapering upward, 
till the crown is formed on short, spreading limbs. 
It is dense, well rounded and beautifully propor- 
tioned; the size in circumference, rather than in 
height. Yet the wide circumference will in almost 
all cases, cause an observer to under estimate the 
actual height. 
The rich, dark green, shining foliage, dense 
and abundant, imparts the finished beauty and 
grace to this lordly tree. The foliage is unlike 
every other oak in hard finished or glazed surface, 
that sparkles in the sunshine like the orange and 
magnolia. Standing beneath one, and gazing up- 
ward, among the limbs that look as if the storms of 
