Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/233

 to the Barrens, the soil of which, as I have remarked, is fertile enough, and where there are notwithstanding here and there Scroby oaks, or quercus nigra, shell-barked hickeries, or juglans hickery, which in forests characterise the worst of soil. In support of this mode of appreciating in America the fecundity of the soil by the nature of the trees it produces, I shall impart a remarkable observation that I made on my entering this state. In Kentucky and Cumberland,[49] independent of a few trees natives of this part of these countries, the mass of the forests, in estates of the first class, is composed of the same species which {166} are found, but very rarely, east of the mountains, in the most fertile soil; these species are the following, cerasus Virginia, or cherry-tree; juglans oblonga, or white walnut; pavia lutea, buck-eye; fraxinus alba, nigra, cerulea, or white, black, and blue ash; celtis foliis villosis, or ack berry; ulmus viscosa, or slippery elm; quercus imbricaria, or black-jack oak; guilandina disica, or coffee tree; gleditsia triacanthos, or honey locust; and the annona triloba, or papaw, which grows thirty feet in height. These three latter species denote the richest lands. In the cool and mountainous parts, and along the rivers where the banks are not very steep, we observed again the quercus macrocarpa, or over-cup white oak, the acorns of which are as large as a hen's egg; the acer sacharinum, or sugar-maple; the fagus sylvatica, or beech; together with the planus occidentalis, or plane: the liriodendrum tulipifera, or white and yellow poplar; and the magnolia acuminata, or cucumber-tree, all three of which measure from eighteen to twenty feet in cir-