LETTEES FEOM ALABAMA. 
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the ash. The hark of old trees is full of deep 
furrows : if wounded in summer, it distills a fluid 
gum or resin in very small quantity, possessed of 
an agreeable fragrance. The wood being strong 
and tough, and of close texture, is sometimes cleft 
into rails, and used for building, but having little 
durability, it is not much valued. 
This must not be confounded with the Sour 
Gum or Black Gum {Nyssa sylvatica)^ a tree of a 
very different genus. This thrives best on the 
high grounds, where it becomes a noble tree of 
seventy or eighty feet in height. The leaves are 
long-oval, rather crumpled ; the fruit, from which 
it derives its commonest appellation, is a beautiful 
oval berry of a deep blue, generally arranged in 
pairs at the end of a long pink footstalk. They 
look very tempting to the eye, but like the apples 
of Sodom^ they are nauseous to the palate, for 
though the first taste of their acidity is agreeable, 
they are found to be intensely bitter. The berry 
contains a largish flattened stone, marked with 
longitudinal lines. The wood is exceedingly hard 
to split, the fibres being singularly interwoven, like 
a braided cord — ^a very remarkable peculiarity of 
this genus. There is a joke current of a poor 
Irish emigrant, who having engaged himself to 
cut and split fence rails, unfortunately selected a 
Sour Gum-tree as the subject of his dissective 
power ; but having toiled all day with indomitable 
perseverance, he accomplished the manufacture of 
but a single rail. 
The Cotton Plant [Gossypium herbaceum), to 
the cultivation of which so very large a portion of 
our fields is appropriated, is now adorned with its 
beautiful blossoms, and even a scattered pod here 
