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My friend procured the animals, and the ship changing her destination, he kept them, in hopes of finding some other conveyance, till they all perished. I do not despair, however, of finding some opportunity still of sending a colony of useful animals. I am making a collection of vines for wine, and for the table; also of some trees, such as the cork-oak, &c. &c.

He had planted in the grounds of the White House the acorns of the cork-oak, black walnuts, peach, plum, and cherry stones, apple and pear seeds, and he watched their germination and growth with great interest.

Within an hour, however, we were passing through a section of the country entirely different in aspect, where the cork industry gives employment to many people. For a distance of eight or ten miles groves of cork-oak trees were in sight.

The children declared that the cork-oak was the best tree of all, but they agreed with their governess that the entire oak family was made up of grand and useful trees.

A moment later the knife almost dropped from my hand at the sound of a brisk hurrah from above, and looking up I saw the stalwart form of the Irish corporal wriggling along the branch of a cork-oak which overhung the slope. He carried his rifle, and, anchoring himself in a fork of the boughs, stared down triumphantly.

The road winds in and out of gullies where rivulets descend from the mountains; they are clothed in cork-oak, ilex, and other trees; golden orioles, jays, hoopoes and rollers flash among the foliage. In winter these hills are swept by boreal blasts from the Apennines, but at this season it is a delightful tract of land.

They stand out from a prevailing background of the familiar forest trees of temperate Europe and America the ash, elm, beech, oak, fir and walnut. The orchards, above those of oranges and lemons, are of figs and olives. The cork-oak covers considerable tracts, but is less attended to than in Spain.

Then we strike the Cremera, and exploring begins among its rocky gullies, up and down which the spirited, sure-footed horses scramble like chamois. Thick woods of cork-oak clothe their sides, and copses of a deciduous tree which I never saw in its summer dress of green, but which keeps its dead leaves all through the winter, a full suit of soft, pale brown contrasting with the dark evergreens.

In founding this unique establishment, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio had as his aim to monopolize the commercial development of the whole of Corsica: iron mines, sulphur mines, copper mines, marble quarries, coral fisheries, oyster beds, water ferruginous and sulphurous, immense forests of thuya, of cork-oak, and to establish for the facilitation of this development a network of railways over the island, with a service of packet-boats in addition.

It takes on a rather narrow, pyramidal head, broadening as it ages, but never betraying kin with its fellow of the swamp, save perhaps when winter has bared its peculiar winged and strangely "corky" branches. These odd branches bear, on some trees particularly, a noticeable ridge, made up of the same substance which in the cork-oak of Europe furnishes the bottle-stoppers of commerce.