The continued use of white oak is assured. It is not necessary to seek new uses for it. The demand is as great as the supply can meet, but the supply is not assured for the distant future. There will always be some white oak in the country; but the best has been or is being cut. The tree grows slowly, and good quarter-sawed white oak cannot be cut from young trees. An age of about 150 years is necessary. Most good white oak lumber today is cut from trees 200 or more years old. When the present supply of venerable oaks has been exhausted, prime oak lumber will be largely a thing of the past. Fortunately, that time has not yet arrived. About eighty years are required to grow a white oak of crosstie size. Those who will grow oak for market in the future will probably not wait much longer than eighty years to cut their trees, and the result will be a scarcity of mature trunks for lumber and veneer. DURAND OAK (_Quercus breviloba_). In some parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana this tree goes to the lumber yard as white oak, and no one is injured by the substitution, for it is heavy, hard, and strong, and is of good color. The wood weighs 59.25 pounds per cubic foot, which places it above the average weight of white oak. It is said to be less tough than white oak. The tree varies greatly in different parts of its range which extends from central Alabama across Texas and into Mexico. It is known as white oak, Texas white oak, shin oak, pin oak, and basket oak. Its best development is in the eastern part of its range where trees eighty or ninety feet high are common; but in Texas the average is scarcely thirty feet high and one in diameter. Westward in Texas it becomes shrubby, and forms extensive thickets of brush. CHAPMAN OAK (_Quercus chapmani_) is put to little use, because trunks are too small. They are seldom more than a foot in diameter, and are often little more than shrubs. The tree grows in the pine barrens near the coast from South Carolina to Florida, and it is found also in great abundance, but generally of small size, on the west coast of Florida from Tampa to the Apalachicola river. [Illustration] BUR OAK [Illustration: BUR OAK] BUR OAK (_Quercus Macrocarpa_) This splendid oak was named by Michaux, a French traveler and botanist who visited many parts of eastern and southeastern United States more than a century ago. The botanical name _macrocarpa_, means “large fruit.” The bur oak bears small acorns in the North, and very large ones in the South. They are sometimes two inches long and one and a half inches wide, and “large-fruit” oak is an appropriate name for the tree in the South, but would not be near the northern limit of its range.