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The live oak (Quercus viretis) is to our country, of the oak family, next in importance 

 to the white oak ; it is indigenous to the southern portion of the United States, and is found 

 in its greatest perfection in low, moist, loamy soils. This tree lives to a veiy great age, 

 frequently exceeding eight or ten centuries, if the yearly annular accretions are to be depended 

 on as authority. It generally grows to the height of forty or fifty feet ; the trunk, large ; 

 branches, large and long; and from the strength and toughness of its fibres, and its great 

 durability, the timber from it has obtained a preference for ship building to that of any other 

 tree known. 



This tree, not anywhere extensively to be foimd, is already becoming scarce in 

 the neighborhood of navigable waters. Its great value in a national point of view, its 

 limited development and its exceedingly slow growth, render its preservation and cultivation 

 an object deserving the prompt and efficient attention of our government. In fact it is an 

 obligation which the present owes to the prospective greatness of the future, and as human 

 nature is constituted it should be elaborately cancelled. 



There are several other oaks which may be used for timber, particularly if subjected to 

 some mineralizing process, such, for instance, as the yellow oak, (Q. acuminata,) chestnut white 

 oak, (Q. prims,) black oak, (Q. tinctoria,) etc., but the woody fibres of them all want the 

 strength and elasticity which so eminently characterize those of the white and live oaks. 



In addition to these differences in the quality of wood others are presented of quite as 

 much importance in the form of diseases, and require some notice, more particularly as the 

 woodman, who is either paid by the day or labors at a certain rate for felling and dressing 

 trees into timber, is wholly indifferent to quality, except so far as it may be the more easily 

 worked, and thus present the fairest outward form. 



Some builders are equally indifferent ' in regard to the quality of timber, and apply that 

 which is diseased, or in a perishing state, with that which is sound to btiilding purposes, 

 without reference to consequences. Hence the frequent losses and disappointments which accrue 

 and to which I shall again refer. 



One of the most prevalent diseases to which trees are subject, is the solidification or closing 

 up of the pores next to the pith, from which it extends outwardly towards the alburnum. In 

 the first stages it is manifested by dottiness ; afterwards the woody fibres which are afiected, 

 undergo the various changes of decomposition, and they become hollow to a greater or less 



