850 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



of the country is a conspicuous one. A special make of 

 wagon has been provided for the baker, butcher, grocer, 

 huckster, ice cream vender, fishmonger, flower seller, and 

 a list of others almost interminable. Most of these are 

 specialized in bodies rather than in gear. Each has its 

 boxes, shelving, and compartments built to meet the 

 user's peculiar needs. Much pine, fir, cedar, spruce, 

 hemlock, cypress, and redwood are worked into such 

 tops and bodies. Accompanying these softwoods, and 

 used in the same way, are cottonwood, basswood, gum, 

 poplar, elm, sycamore, hackberry, beech, buckeye, and 

 other hardwoods. Much ash and some hickory are em- 



now as they supplied it before railroads captured the 

 long-distance travel. 



No one man invented the vehicle, but many a man has 

 made improvements on models already existing. Patents 

 by thousands have been placed on record, nearly three 

 thousand patents for springs alone. There are patents 

 on hubs, axles, tops, and on nearly every other piece and 

 parcel of a vehicle. These indicate growth and develop- 

 ment, though the first vehicle made by man was so long 

 ago that no record of it exists. Some of the ancients used 

 sleds when they could not make wheels strong enough to 

 carry the loads, and it was dry sledding in the deserts of 



POSSIBILITIES OF THE MOTOR TRUCK 



Remarkable strength and excellent speed characterize motor trucks like that in the above illustration (Duplex, Lansing, Michigan). The wooden 

 wheels are feats of engineering, no less than the powerful motor and the rigid frame. The maximum load that may be carried is measured by 

 bulk rather tiian by pounds. 



ployed for bows and other parts of the tops of such 

 business wagons and over all the tent or cover is stretch- 

 ed as a protection against snow and rain. 



The horse-drawn stage coach, famous in the days of 

 Charles Dickens' American tour, and later in the western 

 experiences of Mark Twain, has nearly gone out of use; 

 but not so with the city omnibus and the taxi. These 

 vehicles are in the thick of business and they are largely of 

 wood. They are passenger carriers, as the old stage-coach 

 and thoroughbraces were, and forests supply the material 



Africa and in the land of the Hittites. Yet those people 

 knew about sleds and some of the loads hauled on them 

 surpassed the records of the largest sled loads of logs in 

 Michigan and Wisconsin. The ancient people had wheels 

 also, and they had many kinds and sizes. Some were 

 nothing more than wooden rollers like modern house 

 movers use, and they worked in the same way. They 

 had wheels on axles, some of them heavy for oxen, 

 others light for horses. They made built-up wheels such 

 as we make now. A rock carving in Syria shows a chariot 



