Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/234

 cumference; the plane, as I have before observed, attains a greater diameter. The two species of poplar, i. e. the white and yellow wood, have not the least external character, neither in their leaves nor flowers, by which they may be {167} distinguished from each other; and as the species of the yellow wood is of a much greater use, before they fell a tree they satisfy themselves by a notch that it is of that species.

In estates of the second class are the fagus castanea, or chestnut tree; quercus rubra, or red oak; quercus tinctoria, or black oak; laurus sassafras, or sassafras; diospiros virginia, or persimon; liquidambar styraciflua, or sweet gum; nyssa villosa, or gum tree, a tree which, in direct opposition to its name, affords neither gum nor resin. Those of the third class, which commonly are dry and mountainous, produce very little except black and red oaks, chestnut oaks of the mountains, quercus prinus montana, or rocky oak pines, and a few Virginia cedars.

The juglans pacane is found beyond the embouchure of the rivers Cumberland and Tennessea, whence they sometimes bring it to the markets at Lexinton. This tree does not grow east of the Alleghany Mountains. The lobelia cardinalis grows abundantly in all the cool and marshy places, as well as the lobelia sphilitica. The latter is more common in Kentucky than in the other parts of the United States that I travelled over. The laurus {168} bensoin, or spice wood, is also very numerous there. The two kinds of vaccinium and andromeda, which form a series of more than thirty species, all very abundant in the eastern states, seem in some measure excluded from those of the western and the chalky region, where we found none but the andromeda arborea.

In all the fertile parts covered by the forests the soil is