Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/131

 machine, have no point, and cannot be used for the same purposes as others wrought in the usual way; notwithstanding, a great many people prefer them for nailing on roofs of houses. They pretend that these nails have not the inconvenience of starting out by reason of the weather, as it frequently happens with others; as upon the roofs of old houses a great number of nails may be seen {16} which do not appear to have been driven in more than half or one-third of their length.

During my stay at New York, I took a botanical excursion into New Jersey, by the river side, towards the north. This part of New Jersey is very uneven; the soil is hard and flinty, to judge of it by the grass which I saw in places pulled up. Large rocks, of a chalky nature, as if decayed, appeared even with the ground upon almost all the hills. Notwithstanding, we observed different species of trees; among others, a variety of the red oak, the acorn of which is nearly round; the white oak, quercus alba; and, among the different species or varieties of nut trees, the juglans tomentosa, or mocker-nut, and the juglans minima, or pig-nut. In the low and marshy places, where it is overflowed almost all the year, we found the juglans-hickery, or shell-barked hickery; the quercus prinus aquatica, which belongs to the series of prunus, and is not mentioned in the "History of Oaks." The valleys are planted with ash trees, palms, cornus florida's poplars, and quercus tinctoria's, known in the country by the name of the black oak.

The quercus tinctoria is very common in all the {17} northern states; it is likewise found to the west of the Alleghany mountains, but is not so abundant in the low