WESTERN OAK. 
3 
say, but probably as far as Nootka Sound. In Upper 
California it is scarcely found beyond Monterey; its 
limit is probably somewhere between the 38th and 50th 
degree. 
The wood is remarkably white for an Oak, hard and 
fine grained, and well suited for almost every kind of 
construction for which the White Oak or English Oak 
is employed. It was used by our trading party as 
barrel staves, and was found no way inferior to White 
Oak. Logs of it brought a good price at the Sandwich 
Islands, and, in short, there is scarcely any thing in 
which strength or durability are requisite, for which 
this timber is not suited. The acorns being sweet and 
agreeable, form an excellent mast for hogs, and even 
the aborigines of this region, who never cultivate the soil, 
employed them for food, first preparing them by stoving 
and afterwards laying them away under ground for 
future use. 
The acorns are much larger than those of the Post 
Oak, as well as rounder. The leaf bears a considerable 
resemblance to that species, but is smaller, and, in fact, 
intermediate in form between it and the European 
species (Q. pedunculata .) It differs from both, in the 
whiteness of its wood. The bark is whitish and scaly, 
almost similar to that of the White Oak. The leaves 
from the first are not pubescent above, or only slightly 
so along the midrib, the hairs more numerous beneath, 
are, as in many other species, collected into stellated 
clusters; the young leaves of the Post Oak, previous to 
expansion, appear brownish-yellow, and like a mass of 
velvet, with the copious pubescence by which they are 
clad; in ours this appearance never occurs, and the old 
leaves become nearly smooth; the lobes have narrow 
sinuous openings, which scarcely pass half way down 
through the leaf; the lobes are usually 4 on a side, and 
