WILD FLOWER PRESERVATION. 
7 
women’s clubs, village improvement societies and civic federations. 
Professor Hitchcock spoke of the damage to the sand dunes at 
Cape Henlopen, by the destruction of the trees, and stated that it 
will result in the changing of the topography of the cape. 
It was moved that the managers of the society take measures 
to bring the matter of educating children and teachers to a better 
understanding of the dangers from fire, before the boards of 
education in various cities and states. 
Elizabeth G. Britton, 
Secretary. 
A CURIOUS WHITE OAK. 
Last autumn while walking through the woods in the vicinity 
of Central Heights, East Washington, I came across a curiously 
shaped tree. The tree had light green, pinnately lobed leaves, 
oblong acorns about an inch long set in a shallow, rough cup, and 
light gray bark scaling off in thin plates. It proved to be Quercus 
alba L., the common white oak, which is perhaps the most abun¬ 
dant tree in the forests about the District of Columbia. 
For the first four and a half feet the trunk grows naturally in 
a vertical direction, then it bends abruptly at a right angle for 
about the same distance, after which it again takes a vertical 
direction, growing to a height of about thirty feet and overtop¬ 
ping its neighbors. 
It seems evident that this tree when fairly well grown into a 
sapling was broken, perhaps by some boy climbing for a bird’s 
nest. The principal growth then began in one of its limbs, the 
wound healing and the other limbs and branches gradually dying 
and dropping off. 
It is not unusual to come across queerly twisted branches, 
knotted grape-vines and oddly shaped roots, but it is very seldom 
that one sees so large a tree as this was, twisted so very abruptly, 
especially of a species whose characteristic habit is to grow tall 
and straight. 
Verily, “ As the twig is bent the tree is inclined.” 
C. M. Mansfield. 
