1344 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



stances, burn with such extreme slowness that the floor 

 is not usually put out of use. 



Wooden floors formed parts of some very ancient 

 liuildings. Occasionally the floors and roofs were of 

 wood while 

 other material 

 formed the 

 walls. Traces 

 of wooden 

 floors are 

 found in some 

 of the prehis- 

 toric stone 

 buildings 

 which are sup- 

 posed to have 

 been erected 

 by ancestors of 

 Indian tribes 

 of New Mex- 

 ico and Ari- 

 zona. Such 

 floors may 

 have been only 

 poles and small 

 logs closely fit- 

 t e d together, 

 or two or more 

 layers crossing 

 at right angles ; 

 but the floor 

 was an essen- 

 tial part of the 

 architect's plan 

 and of the 

 builder's work. 



The evolu- 

 tion of the 

 wooden floor 

 has been inter- 

 esting and its 

 history long. 

 The neolithic 

 man may have 

 floored his camp with brush cut with a stone knife and 

 spread over the snow or the wet sand to keep his feet 

 out of the water or off of the ice. No records of such 

 have come down from the stone age, but they doubtless 

 existed. Be that as it may, miners in Alaska make brush 

 floors yet to hold their feet above the snow, water, and 

 slush when they pitch their tents for the night's camp 

 during their cross-country expeditions. After packing 

 a heavy load on his shoulders all day, or driving a team 

 of huskies, the traveler in the far northern country 

 selects his night's camping place, and one of the first 

 things he does to make his camp ready is to cut spruce 

 brush, spread the branches for a floor, start a fire in his 

 shcetiron stove, and then remove his boots to give his 

 tired feet a rest. The branches keep his feet dry though 



P.\CIFIC COAST M.\PLE 



Most maple flooring is cut east of the Missis- 

 sippi river and north of the Ohio. It comes from 

 the common sugar tree, generally known as har<l 

 maple. Some maple flooring is cut on the Paciiic 

 Coast from the Oregon maple. It is not abundant 

 but the flooring is generally satisfactory. It is 

 not quite so hard as the eastern maple. 



snow or water may cover the ground beneath. Thus, 

 what was probably the oldest pattern of wooden floor in 

 the world is still in use, having undergone no change 

 since the days of pleistocene men who hunted the saber 

 toothed tiger in California and the hairy elephant in 

 Siberia. 



The American pioneers floored their cabins with wood 

 l)efore they had sawmills for cutting lumber. Most of 

 the earliest huts in the forest had puncheon floors, if 

 they had any except the ground, for dirt floors were not 



then uncom- 

 mon and they 

 were used 

 when wood 

 was abundant. 

 The surface of 

 the ground 

 was smoothed, 

 tramped hard, 

 and it was fre- 

 q u e n t 1 y the 

 only floor the 

 cabin knew. 

 Rural politi- 

 cians of early 

 days s o m e - 

 times liked to 

 parade the in- 

 formation that 

 they were 

 "raised in a 

 cabin with a 

 dirt floor." 

 They seemed 

 to imagine that 

 it was a credit 

 to them, while, 

 as a matter of 

 fact, it was an 

 admission and 

 confession of 

 ordinary lazi- 

 ness, because 

 no man had 

 any excuse for 

 living very 

 long in a cabin 

 with a dirt 

 floor in those 

 times and 

 places of 

 abundant tim- 

 ber. 



Punch eon 

 floors were 

 common. They were made of split logs, flat sides up, 

 and smoothed with ax or adz, and fitted edge to edge. 

 In the California redwood country, houses somewhat 

 pretentious in dimensions were often floored with split 



RED O.AK FLOORING MATERIAL 



Manufacturers of flooring find much excellent 

 material for their output in the mature trunks 

 of northern red oaks. This wood is not usually 

 as highly figured as the white oak, but it is 

 naturally higher in color and that may offset 

 any deficiency in the figures of the quartered 

 wood. It is frequently well figured. 



