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MANUAL OF NATURE STUDY. 
Reviews: — Characteristics of Plants . 
1. Oak. — Leaves alternate, simple, nett- 
veined, with stipules deciduous. Flowers general¬ 
ly in catkins. Fruit an acorn. Bark of red oak 
with smooth stripes. Of white oak , scaly. Burr 
oak , furrowed. Black oak , black bark. 
2. The Birch. —Flowers in bright, yellow cat¬ 
kins. Leaves of black birch heart shaped and 
doubly serrate. Of gray birch , triangular with a 
long taper point, twice serrate. Of red birch , 
ovate, acute at both ends and doubly serrate. 
Arrangment alternate. The bark of black , or 
cherry birch , with an agreeable smell. Of gray , 
or white birch , scaling off in white strips and 
layers. Of red birch , loose, shaggy and reddish 
brown. 
3. Horse chestnut .—Leaves palmately com¬ 
pound, and composed of seven leaflets all diverging 
from the same point on the leaf-stalk, opposite. 
Flowers are in panicles or racemes, and yellow and 
reddish in color. Each panicle is as large as a lilac 
raceme. The fruit is a mahogany colored seed about j 
the size of a hickory nut, enclosed in a prickly burr. 
The buckeye is the American horse-chestnut and 
has five leaflets instead of seven, and the fruit burr 
is smooth instead of prickly. 
