The probable future of chestnut oak is an interesting problem for study. Few steps have yet been taken looking toward providing for generations to come. Chestnut oak has been left to take care of itself. The trees, produced in nature’s way, have been ample to supply all needs in the past, and they will be for the near future. Chestnut oak possesses some advantages over most of the other oaks. Large trees will grow on very poor soil, where most other oaks are little more than shrubs. Trees so grown are little more susceptible to disease than if produced in good soil, though they develop more slowly and are smaller. There are many poor flats and sterile ridges in the chestnut oak’s range, and they will produce timber of fairly good kind, if the chestnut oaks are permitted to have them. Nature gave this tree facilities for taking possession. Its acorns will grow without being buried. They do not depend on blue jays to carry them to sunny openings or squirrels to plant them; but they will sprout where they fall, whether on hard gravelly soil or dry leaves; and they at once set about getting the tap roots of the future trees into the ground. In many instances the chestnut oak’s acorns do not wait to fall from the tree before they sprout. Like the seed of the Florida mangrove, they are often ready to take root the day they touch the ground. The large acorn is stored with plantfood which sustains the growing germ for some time, and the ground must be very hard and exceedingly dry if a young chestnut oak is not soon firmly established, and good for two or three hundred years, if let alone. The forester who may undertake to grow chestnut oaks must exercise great care in transplanting the seedlings, or the tap roots will be broken and the young trees will die. The best plan is to drop acorns on the ground where trees are expected to grow, and nature will do the rest, provided birds and beasts leave the acorns alone. [Illustration] CHINQUAPIN OAK [Illustration: CHINQUAPIN OAK] CHINQUAPIN OAK (_Quercus Acuminata_) This tree is known as yellow chestnut oak, chinquapin oak, chestnut oak, pin oak, yellow oak, scrub oak, dwarf chestnut oak, shrub oak, and rock oak. It should not be confused with _Quercus prinus_, the true chestnut oak, although it is commonly known in so many sections of the country by the latter name; the names yellow oak, pin oak, and scrub oak are likewise applied to many species, so that the only way to accurately designate members of this great family is to employ their botanical names. However, this species should always be known as the chinquapin oak, which is a distinctive term, and not applied to any other. The bark of this tree is light gray and is broken into thin flakes, silvery-white, sometimes slightly tinted with brown, rarely half an inch thick. The branchlets are marked with pale lenticels.