The planter of oak should throw in a considerable proportion of Turkish oak into the more favourable soils and situations. The beautiful clustered, fretted foliage of this species gives a richness, and, in winter, when it retains the withered leaf, a warmth of colouring to our young plantations beyond any other {41} of our hardy trees and shrubs. We have had this kind, eighteen years old, equal in size to larches of the same age in the same ground. We cut down several of these oaks of about 8 inches in diameter, and compared the timber and bark with those of common oak of the same age. The timber was clean, very tough and flexible, with much _flash_, and we should suppose might suit for plank when matured; at any rate, from the splendid shew of the laminæ (_flash_), it would form beautiful pannelling and furniture. It shrunk, however, extremely while drying, which must have been partly owing to the quick growing and youngness, it thence consisting almost entirely of sap-wood, and this sap-wood almost entirely of sap; and, when left in the sun in the round state, after peeling, rent nearly to splinters,—much more than the common oak under the same exposure. The bark was about double the thickness and weight of that of the common oak of equal size, and, in proportion to its weight, consisted much more of that cellular or granular substance most productive of tannin. The varieties of common oak with thick bark are generally of inferior quality of timber; but they are by far the finest, most luxuriant growing trees, with rich heavy foliage, and appear as giants standing in the same row with {42} the thin barked varieties, though planted at the same time. To the naturalist the oak is an object of peculiar interest, from the curious phenomena connected with the economy of numerous insects who depend upon it for existence. It would be tedious to describe the different apples, galls, excrescences, tufts, and other monstrosities which appear upon the oak. It is something like enchantment! These insects, merely by a puncture and the deposition of an egg, or drop of fluid, turning Nature from her law, and compelling the Genius of the Oak to construct of living organized oak matter, instead of leaves and twigs, fairy domes and temples, in which their embryo young may lie for a time enshrined. SPANISH CHESTNUT—_Castanea vulgaris_, (_Fagus Castanea, L._)