Canadian Log House at the United States 



Centennial. 



To a lover of nature interested in forestry one of the most pleasin ^ 

 features of the International Exhibition at Philadelphia was the display of 

 native woods from all parts of the world. Nearly every country 

 participating exhibited a fall collection of the wood growth native to its 

 soil. This was done in a variety of ways, by logs, sections, planks with 

 and without bark, rough and dressed lumber, polished woods, and manu- 

 factured articles. There was great difference in the degree of skill 

 displayed by the various commissioners in arranging these collections, so 

 as to show the many points of interest, and in this particular the Japanese 

 far exceeded all others. By a very simple yet ingenious and tastefu 

 arrangement they exhibited a large variety in a remarkably condensed 

 form, but with details complete. A single piece of each kind of wood was 

 entered, a half cylinder, about four feet in length, so cut and prepared as 

 to show, in each case, the size and nature of growth, bark and wood, heart 

 ;md sapwood, transverse and diagonal sections, rough, dressed and polished 

 surfaces, while to each there was attached (as a rule) a preserved specimen 

 of foliage, flower, and fruit. 



The Canadian log house was decidedly the most unique and picturesque 

 of all the special exhibits. At once a monument to nature's rich endow . 

 ment and the leading industry of the Dominion, it was such an attractive -. 

 and instructive object that it merits a full description. 



Let it be noted, in passing, that omitting the provinces of Manitoba 

 and British Columbia, with their vast area of over 3,000,000 square miles, 

 but one-tenth of the soil of Canada is open to cultivation, while the greater 

 portion of the remainder is clothed with primeval forests ; this building, 

 therefore, represents the chief natural product of nearly half a million 

 square miles of British territory. 



This interesting structure is, to all appearance, a building, and yet in 

 reality only a pile of logs and merchantable lumber of every form 

 Porticoes, hall, salon, stairways, attic, balcony, and cupola, all are formed 

 by ingeniously piling the lumber of different kinds, few fastenings being 

 visible. The building is peristyle in form, with nearly flat roof, surmounted 

 by a four-faced pyramidal tower, and occupies a ground space of sixty feet 

 by forty. The sixteen columns which sustain the roof are single logs of 

 ash, beech, birch, butternut, chestnut, cherry, elm, hemlock, sugar maple,, 

 white maple, white, red, and yellow pine, poplar, spruce, and walnut, no 

 two of a kind, all fifteen feet long, and ranging from three to four feet in 

 diameter at the base ; the six columns on either side rest upon a single 

 stick of timber, as sills, of white pine, sixty feet long, squared by sawing 

 forty inches by thirty-six inches. 



