When it grows near the sea it is apt to lose its tree form and become a shrub. It assumes that form on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands off the coast of southern California. It grows slowly and is tenacious of life. When it has once secured a foothold it hangs on with determination, though exposed to severe storms and inhospitable conditions. The acorns do not mature until late in the autumn of their second year. They are sometimes an inch and a half long, and scarcely a third of an inch thick. The wood of this oak possesses some good qualities which are locally appreciated by wagon makers who use it for repair work. It is extensively cut for fuel, and it burns about like eastern white oak, but leaves more ashes. The dry wood weighs 49 pounds per cubic foot. It is considerably weaker than white oak and is less elastic. The summerwood constitutes a large part of the annual growth ring. It is very porous, the rows of pores running parallel with the medullary rays. This part of the wood structure is midway between that of deciduous and the evergreen oaks. The medullary rays are broad but short. When exposed on a tangential surface, they are from one-fourth to one-half inch long, and give the wood a flecked appearance. Exposed in cross section, they are from one inch to four inches in length. This applies, of course, only to large rays, easily seen with the naked eye. In quarter-sawed lumber, the rays have a pinkish color and glossy luster which are not pleasing. This tree belongs in the class with those which are in no danger of being extirpated by human agencies. It occupies land which man does not need and will never want. MYRTLE OAK (_Quercus myrtifolia_) associates with the laurel oak in some parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and closely resembles it, though it is smaller, and gives little promise of ever becoming important in a commercial way. It is clearly in the scrub oak class, and does not approach the dignity of even a small tree in most of its range. Few specimens can be found exceeding a height of twenty feet and a diameter of five or six inches. Trees approaching that size grow in western Florida in the region of the Apalachicola river. Generally this oak covers dry, sandy ridges and islands, and is shrubby. It forms thickets on some of the islands off the coast of Alabama and Mississippi, and extends its range westward to the low, southern parts of Louisiana where the dwarf trees are almost hidden by tall reeds and grass. Its name refers to the leaf it bears. It is impossible that man can ever make much use of this tree.