LXIV 
OAKS TRAINED TO PRODUCE CORK 
I SN'T IT ODD that man has found a way to trick the 
sturdy oak tree into making cork with which to stop 
his bottles! 
Cork does not come from the natural bark of the oak. 
Along the Mediterranean, chiefly in Spain and North 
Africa, there grows a hardy, evergreen oak. It is rarely 
more than thirty feet tall and two feet through the trunk. 
It does not compare with the splendid white oaks and red 
oaks of America. But it grows on poor ground that is 
good for nothing else. 
This oak tree, under natural conditions, does not pro¬ 
duce cork. It must be trained to do so. It takes fifty 
years to educate a cork-oak tree to the point where it 
yields a first-class crop of bottle stoppers. The Spanish 
learned how to do this many centuries ago. Science, with 
all its inventions, has not yet found a stopper to take its 
place. 
Here is the way the cork tree was taught to yield its 
crop. It is allowed to grow on a hillside for twenty-five 
years before its training starts. Then the cork farmer 
appears and strips off its outer bark, which seems little 
different from that of any other oak tree. He does not 
cut too deeply when he does this stripping, however, 
or he will kill the tree. The inner bark that carries the 
sap to nourish the tree is left in place. But the tree is 
peeled down to the part where it is tender. It immedi- 
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