stances used in medicine, its bark is almost indispensably necessary for the tanner, the dyer, &c. in short, it is the daily food for fuel so necessary to our existence.

There are many species of oak entirely unknown, and the majority of such as grow in America assume such a variety of forms in their young state, that they cannot be distinguished with certainty, but in proportion as the tree arrives at maturity. It seems as if nature wished to multiply the oak, and to render it of general advantage in causing different species to grow under the same latitudes, and accommodate themselves to the various degrees of temperature and soil-for the oak does not always grow in forests, neither does it invariably arrive to a great height;

there are countries which produce only dwarf oaks, as the Kermes oak, or Quercus coccifera of Linnæus, and some others, which are by their nature small; whilst others again, which grow on rocks, and

the

the coasts of the Mediterranean sea, are ge-
nerally stunted and of diminutive stature,
occasioned only by the aridity of the soil,
in which they have originally lodged them-
selves. Many varieties also exist, merely
occasioned by accidental causes.--In N.
America, dwarf stoloniferous or creeping
oaks occur, whose multiplied shoots cover
immense tracts of land. The meadows
situated in the midst of the forests of
America are burned annually by the sa-
vages, and new inhabitants, who endea-
vour by this custom to produce a new
herbage, with the view of attracting the
fawns, and feeding cattle thereon-the
forests themselves having caught fire in
their turn, and the tall trees being de-
stroyed, the horizontal roots of many spe-
cies of oak, detached from the trunk,
reproduce of themselves, and separately,
shoots, which yield fruit afterwards at
the height of two or three feet-each
bundle or assemblage of these shoots on

the