The wood of the chestnut is light, soft, and not strong, but it is used for making cheap furniture. It is also made into rails, posts, and railroad ties, as it is durable when used in contact with the soil. The nuts are sweet and edible and have great market value. The trees bear fruit when they are very young, and some Western farmers find that orchards of these trees bring better returns than the same amount of land in farm products. The chestnut is closely allied to the sweet or Spanish chestnut of Europe. The nuts of the American species are sweeter than those of the Spanish chestnut, but they are much smaller. From a French experiment it was found that the kernel of the chestnut yields sixteen per cent of good sugar. [Illustration: CHESTNUT _Castanea dentata_ Page 82 ] [Illustration: 1. Red Oak. 2. Scarlet Oak. 3. Black Oak. 4. Pin Oak. 5. Swamp White Oak. 6. White Oak. 7. Mossy-cup Oak. 8. Post Oak. 9. Chestnut Oak. ] The generic name was taken from Castanea, a town in Thessaly, and the specific name, _dentata_ (having teeth), refers to the serrations of the leaf. The chestnut is found throughout the Northeastern States. [Sidenote: Oaks _Quercus_] There are in all nearly three hundred different oaks which have been described by botanists, and fifty of these are found in North America, exclusive of Mexico. The oaks are large trees of temperate climates, and both in Europe and America few trees have the same varied and general usefulness. The extraordinary strength in the great, horizontal branches, their breadth and lateral sweep, and the rugged boldness of the trunk have long associated the oak with all that stands for strength, duration, and unswerving vitality. An oak never seems out of place; no matter whether we find it growing in unbroken forests, on a country estate, in a little garden, or by the roadside, it always harmonizes with its surroundings and adds to the composition of the landscape. Oaks are divided into two groups, the white oaks and the black oaks. In New England there are eleven native oaks, six white oaks and five black. The white oak, the swamp white, the mossy cup, the chestnut, the dwarf chestnut, and the post oak belong to the first group, and the black oak, the red, the scarlet, the pin, and the bear or scrub oak belong to the second group. The oak is distinguished from all other trees by its acorn. The general characteristics of the oaks in winter are as follows:— The upper lateral buds cluster at the top of the twig. The buds have a tendency towards being five-sided in shape. The bud scales are close and overlapping. The leaf-scars project from the stem. The bundle-scars are scattered over the leaf-scar. The pith is five-angled. By cutting a twig across, the pith can be seen in the centre in the form of a five-rayed star. The leaves very often remain on oaks through the winter. The following characteristics distinguish the white oaks from the black oaks:—