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A. Sterling, The Attitude of Lumbermen toward Forest Fires.

      1904, p. 381. A. D. Hopkins, Insect Injuries to Forest Products.

      1905, p. 455. Henry Grinell, Prolonging the Life of Telephone Poles.

      1905, p. 483. J. Grivin Peters, Waste in Logging Southern Yellow Pine.

      1905, p. 636. Quincy R. Craft, Progress of Forestry in 1905.

      1907, p 277. Raphael Zon and E. H. Clapp, Cutting Timber in the National Forests.

      U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Entomology Bulletins:

      No. 11. n. s. L. O. Howard, The Gypsy Moth in America.

      No. 28. A. D. Hopkins, Insect Enemies of the Spruce in the Northeast.

      No. 32. n. s. A. D. Hopkins, Insect Enemies of the Pine in the Black Hills Forest Reserve.

      No. 48. A. D. Hopkins, Catalog of Exhibits of Insect Enemies of Forest and Forest Products at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 1904.

      No. 56. A. D. Hopkins, The Black Hills Beetle.

      No. 58. Part 1, A. D. Hopkins, The Locust Borer.

      No. 58. Part II, J. L. Webb, The Western Pine Destroying Bark Beetle.

      U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, Bulletins:

      No. 32. Herman von Schrenck, A Disease of the White Ash Caused by Polyporus Fraxinophilus, 1903.

      No. 36. Hermann von Schrenck, The "Bluing" and "Red Rot" of the Western Yellow Pine, 1903.

      Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Lumber Industry, Part I, Standing Timber, February, 1911. The latest and most reliable investigation into the amount and ownership of the forests of the United States.

      Ward, H. Marshall, Timber and some of its Diseases. London: Macmillan & Co., 295 pp. An English book that needs supplementing by information on American wood diseases, such as is included in the list of government publications given herewith. The book includes a description of the character, structure, properties, varieties, and classification of timbers.

Chapter I.

       Table of Contents

      THE STRUCTURE OF WOOD.

      When it is remembered that the suitability of wood for a particular purpose depends most of all upon its internal structure, it is plain that the woodworker should know the essential characteristics of that structure. While his main interest in wood is as lumber, dead material to be used in woodworking, he can properly understand its structure only by knowing something of it as a live, growing organism. To facilitate this, a knowledge of its position in the plant world is helpful.

      All the useful woods are to be found in the highest sub-kingdom of the plant world, the flowering plants or Phanerogamia of the botanist. These flowering plants are to be classified as follows:

Phanerogamia, (Flowering plants)

I. Gymnosperms. (Naked seeds.) 1. Cycadaceae. (Palms, ferns, etc.) 2. Gnetaceae. (Joint firs.) 3. Conifers. Pines, firs, etc. II. Angiosperms. (Fruits.) 1. Monocotyledons. (One seed-leaf.) (Palms, bamboos, grasses, etc.) 2. Dicotyledons. (Two seed-leaves.) a. Herbs. b. Broad-leaved trees.

      Under the division of naked-seeded plants (gymnosperms), practically the only valuable timber-bearing plants are the needle-leaved trees or the conifers, including such trees as the pines, cedars, spruces, firs, etc. Their wood grows rapidly in concentric annual rings, like that of the broad-leaved trees; is easily worked, and is more widely used than the wood of any other class of trees.

      Of fruit-bearing trees (angiosperms), there are two classes, those that have one seed-leaf as they germinate, and those that have two seed-leaves.

      The one seed-leaf plants (monocotyledons) include the grasses, lilies, bananas, palms, etc. Of these there are only a few that reach the dimensions of trees. They are strikingly distinguished by the structure of their stems. They have no cambium layer and no distinct bark and pith; they have unbranched stems, which as a rule do not increase in diameter after the first stages of growth, but grow only terminally. Instead of having concentric annual rings and thus growing larger year by year, the woody tissue grows here and there thru the stem, but mostly crowded together toward the outer surfaces. Even where there is radial growth, as in yucca, the structure is not in annual rings, but irregular. These one seed-leaf trees (monocotyledons) are not of much economic value as lumber, being used chiefly "in the round," and to some extent for veneers and inlays; e. g., cocoanut-palm and porcupine wood are so used.

      The most useful of the monocotyledons, or endogens, ("inside growers," as they are sometimes called,) are the bamboos, which are giant members of the group of grasses, Fig. 1. They grow in dense forests, some varieties often 70 feet high and 6 inches in diameter, shooting up their entire height in a single season. Bamboo is very highly valued in the Orient, where it is used for masts, for house rafters, and other building purposes, for gutters and water-pipes and in countless other ways. It is twice as strong as any of our woods.

      Under the fruit-bearing trees (angiosperms), timber trees are chiefly found among those that have two seed-leaves (the dicotyledons) and include the great mass of broad-leaved or deciduous trees such as chestnut, oak, ash and maple. It is to these and to the conifers that our principal attention will be given, since they constitute the bulk of the wood in common use.

      The timber-bearing trees, then, are the:

      (1) Conifers, the needle-leaved, naked-seeded trees, such as pine, cedar, etc. Fig. 45, p. 199.

      (2) Endogens, which have one seed-leaf, such as bamboos, Fig. 1.

      (3) Broad-leaved trees, having two seed-leaves, such as oak, beech, and elm. Fig. 48, p. 203.

      The common classifications of trees are quite inaccurate. Many of the so-called deciduous (Latin, deciduus, falling off) trees are evergreen, such as holly, and, in the south, live oak, magnolia and cherry. So, too, some of the alleged "evergreens," like bald cypress and tamarack, shed their leaves annually.

      

      Fig. 1. A Bamboo Grove, Kioto, Japan.

      

      Fig. 2. Ginko Leaf.

      Not all of the "conifers" bear cones. For example, the juniper bears a berry. The ginko, Fig. 2, tho classed among the "conifers," the "evergreens," and the "needle-leaf" trees, bears no cones, has broad leaves and is deciduous. It has an especial interest as being the sole survivor of many species which grew abundantly in the carboniferous age.

      Also, the terms used by lumbermen, "hard woods" for broad-leaved trees and "soft woods" for conifers, are still less exact, for the wood of some broad-leaved trees, as bass and poplar, is much softer than that of some conifers, as Georgia pine and lignum vitae.

      Another classification commonly made is that of "endogens" (inside growers) including bamboos, palms, etc., and exogens (outside growers) which would include both conifers and broad-leaved trees.

      One reason why so many classifications have come into use is that none of them is quite accurate. A better one will be explained later.

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