ROCK ELM AS FUEL. 273 



been bent, a quality wliicli finds for it important employ- 

 ment. In some parts of Michigan, rock elm is largely used 

 for the frame-work of chairs, and for the hubs of wheels and 

 the heavy beams of stump-pullers it has no equal. It is used 

 for the slats of stock-cars, and for this and other purposes 

 large quantities are annually consumed by the railroads. 

 Indeed, the wood of tliis tree is generally employed wherever 

 it can be procured, and where a material combining at once 

 strength, toughness, and solidity, is required. Should it 

 reach the eastern markets, the qualities which have caused 

 it to be eagerly employed wherever it is known will find for 

 rock elm a ready sale here ; while, unless the opinion of those 

 experts to whom specimens have been submitted is a mis- 

 taken one, it will be one of the most valuable, as it is one of 

 the most beautiful, of American woods for the architect and 

 cabinet-maker. 



Taking the standard of weight as the best test of the heat- 

 giving quality of any wood, and of the length of time it will 

 continue to burn, rock elm is barely surpassed as fuel by 

 hickory itself. The specific gravity of eastern second- 

 growth hickory is .838 ; that of rock-elm, .832 ; and that of 

 second-growth eastern white oak, .662 ; so that, applying the 

 test of weight, rock elm as fuel is worth only one per 

 cent less than hickory, while it is worth twenty-six per cent 

 more than white oak, the best fuel which now ever reaches 

 this market in any quantity. Actual experiments show that 

 this wood burns slowly, with a bright steady flame, and with- 

 out snapping : ash equal to sixty-seven hundredths of one per 

 cent of the dry wood consumed is left after burning. As is 

 to be expected of a tree yielding such heavy, close-grained 

 wood, the rock elm grows very slowly. Specimens^ before 

 me, cut from trees grown in Michigan, show that the annual 

 layers of wood vary in width from one-sixteenth to one- 

 eighth of an inch, and that the tendency of this tree is to 

 grow more rapidly with increasing age. One stem, only five 

 inches in diameter, shows sixty-seven annual layers ; but this 

 specimen doubtless grew in very unfavorable soil, as a tree 



1 I am particularly indebted to Professor "W. J. Beal of the Michigan State 

 Agricultural College at Lansing, for excellent specimens of the wood of Ulmus 

 racemosa, and for much interesting information in regard to its employment in 

 the Western States. 

 35 



