12 
WHITE OAK. 
White Oak and the European Oak, I consulted French, English and Ame- 
rican ship-wrights, in almost all the ports of the United States : They 
generally agreed that the European Oak was tougher and more dura- 
ble from the superior closeness of its grain, but that the American 
species was more elastic and required a shorter time, with only half 
the weight to bend it. This adAmntage, though important in ship- 
building, does not compensate for the openness of its pores. Experi- 
ence, however, every day shows that by growing in places long inhabi- 
ted its quality is improved ; and if the American vessels are less durable 
than those built in Europe, it is because the timber is not thoroughly sea- 
soned. 
The greater part of the immense quantity of White Oak exported from 
the United States is sent to England. It is shipped from the Northern 
and Middle States, in the form of boards and of square timber : what 
goes to England from Quebec is brought from the shores of Lake Chain- 
plain, for Canada probably furnishes hardly enough for its own consump- 
tion. 
By an extract from the custom-house books of St. John, which I have 
already quoted, 143,000 cubic feet of Oak would appear to have entered 
by this port during the first six months of 1807. Oddy, in his Treatise 
on the Commerce of Fjurope, says, that in the English dock-yards the 
White Oak from British America is esteemed excellent timber. The 
opinion simply considered is correct ; but that which comes from Balti- 
more and Philadelphia must still be superior. 
Before I conclude this article, I must be allowed to hazard a conjec- 
ture on the consequences of the neglect of all means of preserving and 
multiplying this tree in the United States; consequences which neither 
the federal government nor the States have taken any measures to pre- 
vent. From the increase of population, and from the impoverishment of 
the soil, produced by a gradual change in the climate, the White Oak 
will probably, in less than fifty years, be the most rare in the Middle 
States, where it is now the most abundant, and in Tennessee, Kentucky, 
Genessee, and further north, where it is the least multiplied, it will be the 
most common, and will replace the species which now compose the forests, 
but which the soil will then be too feeble to sustain. Thus near the river 
Kennebeck, in the midst of the primitive forests, composed of the Beeches, 
the Canoe Birch, the Sugar Maple and the Hemlock Spruce, I have 
observed small tracts, formerly cleared and since abandoned, which are 
naturally repeopled with the White and Gray Oaks ; and in the lower part of 
Virginia, poor Red Oaks, Yellow Pines and Loblolly Pines are extensively 
replacing trees of a better quality. East of the mountains, the valleys 
that lie along the rivers are, with a few exceptions, the only places where 
