Of the Oak some naturalists have enumerated twenty-four species. The wood of the White Oak is distinguished by three properties, which give to it its great value: hardness, toughness, and durability. The great variety of purposes to which it is appropriated shows it to be a tree of great value. For ship and carriage building, and in the manufacture of implements of husbandry, it is very valuable. This tree also holds rank on account of its size. In the "Report on the Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts," notice is given of one still standing in Brighton. "In October, 1845, it measured twenty-five feet and nine inches in circumference at the surface. At three feet, it is twenty-two feet four inches; at six feet, fifteen feet two inches. It tapers gradually to the height of about twenty-five feet, where the stump of its ancient top is visible, below which point four or five branches are thrown out, which rise twenty or thirty feet higher. Below, the places of many former limbs are covered over by immense gnarled and bossed protuberances. The trunk is hollow at the base, with a large opening on the southwest, through which boys and men may easily enter. It had probably passed its prime centuries before the first English voice was heard on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. It is still clad with abundant foliage, and, if respected as its venerable age deserves, it may stand an object of admiration for centuries to come." The Charter Oak, in Hartford, Connecticut, is said to measure at the ground thirty-six feet; and in the smallest place above it is eight feet four inches in diameter. THE BUTTON-WOOD TREE. This tree is "remarkable for the rapidity of its growth, especially when standing near water. Loudon mentions one which, standing near a pond, had in twenty years attained the height of eighty feet, with a trunk eight feet in circumference at three feet from the ground, and a head of the diameter of forty-eight feet." "Nowhere is this tree more vigorous than along the rivers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and especially on the Ohio and its tributaries." 'General Washington measured a Button-wood growing on an island in the Ohio, and found its girth, at five feet from the ground, about forty feet.' "In 1802, the younger Michaux and his companions found a large tree of this kind on the right bank of the Ohio, thirty-six miles from Marietta. Its base was swollen in an extraordinary manner, but, at four feet from the ground, its circumference was found to be forty-seven feet," or fifteen feet and eight inches in diameter. It is said that "it may be propagated with more ease than any tree of the forest." "It is valuable stove fuel." S. W. Pomeroy, Esq., a writer in the New England Farmer, expresses the opinion that, on land possessing the same fertility, this tree will furnish fuel which will give the greatest amount of caloric to the acre, except the locust on dry soil.