OAKS LIKE TO BE DIFFERENT 
the other hand, may be fifty feet tall and have a spread of 
one hundred feet. This difference in height and breadth, 
again, seems a matter of temperament. 
The scarlet oak, which makes a redder blaze in the au¬ 
tumn woods than any other, has slender, graceful limbs 
as contrasted with those angular, crooked, grotesque 
branches of the aged swamp oak. Black Jack, on the con¬ 
trary, can hardly be styled a tree at all but a riot of 
brush that believes its duty is to overrun otherwise barren 
spaces. 
The burr oak, which in itself is a shaggy and lusty tree, 
specializes on growing large-sized acorns, two^thirds of 
whose surface it covers with a mossy cup fringed with 
burrs. The pin oak, a stately tree, often planted in city 
streets, produces a tiny acorn in a hard little cup that 
seems to grasp only the heel of it. The live oak keeps its 
leaves green all winter. The post oak lets them die but 
holds them, brown and drear as they are, through the 
winter and until the new leaves crowd them off. So 
varied in complexion are these tree brothers that they 
are currently known as white oaks, black oaks, scarlet 
oaks, red oaks, and yellow oaks. Trees, it would seem, 
tire of being and acting alike, just as people do. 
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