26 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



New York City issued bids for white pine boards, aiul the 

 material delivered was determined by the U. S. Forest Service to 

 be an inferior grade of Douglas fir. There is no wood easier for the 

 expert to recognize than Douglas fir, whether it be the largest beam 

 or a tiny splinter, for the tracheids of the wood are marked with 

 tell-tale spirals which need never be mistaken. It takes a compound 

 microscope to see them, but they are always there and no other 

 commercial wood (except yew, wliich is seldom cm the market) has 

 them. 



A company bouglit a shipment of laths supposed to be white pine, 

 and it was considered so important that the stock be true to name 

 that an expert opinion was obtained. Of one hundred specimen 

 laths examined seventy-eight were balsam fir and twenty-two red 

 spruce. These woods look considerably alike to the average user, 

 but the xylologist knows just wliere to look for the points of dis- 

 tinction. White pine has abundant resin ducts visible to the unaided 

 eye — balsam has none at all, and spruce has comparatively few 

 and small ones at that. Under the microscope there are more 

 important differences which only the expert can appreciate. For 

 instance, the rays of white pine and spruce have ray tracheids 

 while balsam has none; the pits in the lateral walls of the ray 

 parenchyma cells are few, simple and large, in spruce they are several, 

 semi-bordered and numerous. These and other features Hx the status 

 of the specimen as a white pine, a spruce or a fir, though some- 

 times it is necessary to know what part of the country the material 

 came from in order to get the exact species. 



[n a certain southern home is an expensive banister and no 

 small item in the bill for its construction was for snake wood. 

 In this case "snake wood" was another name for a curly specimen 

 of our native yellow birch. 



A certain large office in Chicago is finished with what the owners 

 fully believe is expensive Circassian walnut. Somewhere in Arkansas 

 some red gum stumps are still standing from which this native wood 

 with a foreign look was cut. What's in a name? In this case a 

 big fraud, for the owners paid well for something they never re- 

 ceived. The substitution could readily have been detected, for red 

 gum has entirely different structure from walnut of any kind; it 

 is only in the coloring that there is a resemblance. Examine the 

 end of a piece of red gum; a hand lens is required to make oiii. 

 the minute pores, scattered profusely throughout the growth ring. 

 In Circassian walnut the pores are much fewer, large enough to 

 be seen with the unaided eye, and collected in an irregular row at 

 the inner edge of each ring. Mahogany may be distinguished 

 from birch in exactly the same way, having comparatively few, large, 

 scattered pores instead of a large number of very small ones diffused 

 throughout the entire growth ring, as in birch. 



About fifty different woods now masquerade in the market as ma- 

 hogany. Not a few of them are beautiful and under their own 

 names should be welcomed by the furniture trade, but it is not 

 fair that a fictitious value be given them by appropriating the name 

 mahogany. Crabwood (Carapa) from British Guiana is at the 

 present time the principal substitute employed by furniture makers. 

 A great many woods come from Africa to claim their share of the 

 mahogany patronage. 



There seems to be an impression in many places that things of 

 foreign origin are better than domestic. The wood of a bigtree of 

 California was sold recently to a New Jersey manufacturer as a 

 South American cedar suitable for lead pencil stock. Telegraph 

 insulator pins made from so-called Kalkeeu wood, reported to have 

 come from the South Sea Islands, proved to be our native rock elm. 

 When it becomes generally known that such sharp practices can 

 readily be detected the buyer will be in a position to protect himself, 

 and the seller will need to be more cautious. 



One enterprising firm attempted to dispose of a large quantity 

 of ordinary red cedar shavings from local pencil factories. The 

 material was given the name "Cedar of Lebanon" and placed on 

 the market as a household remedy for moths and other troublesome 

 insects. Evidently the promoters thought all cedar chips looked 

 alike, and so they may to the casual observer, but not so to the 

 critical scientists of the government who are on the alert for the 



misbranding of drugs. An agent of the Bureau of Chemistry sub- 

 mitted samples of this "Cedar of Lebanon" to a xylologist and not 

 lontr afterward the company in question changed the name of its 

 insect panacea. Unfortunately the pure food and drugs act does not 

 apply to all forest products. 



Importers of dyewoods and extract woods are often the victims 

 of substitutions and adulterations. When wood or bark is ground 

 into fine particles it is by no means a simple task to determine the 

 exact nature of the original material. Here again is work for the 

 microscope and what it reveals depends upon the experience and 

 ability of the man behind it. By carefully examining the individual 

 cells, noting their size, the thickness and sculpturing of their walls, 

 etc., it usually is possible to identify a material with a fair degree 

 of certainty. If chips are large enough to show the characteristic 

 arrangement of the elements, the task is comparatively easy. About 

 the most unsatisfactory trick of all is to identify the material that 

 has entered into the composition of chemical wood pulp. With in- 

 erustating substances dissolved out and the cells separated and torn, 

 the job is often hopeless. 



A very interesting problem was recently submitted to the Forest 

 Service by one of the largest collar manufacturing concerns in the 

 country. This company was constantly annoyed by the appearance 

 on and in the laundered collars of small specks, little lumps, shiny 

 patches and flecks for which its experts were unable to account. The 

 manager appealed to the dendrologist for assistance, sending samples 

 of the collars in various stages of manufacture, as well as over a 

 thousand of the troublesome specks carefully removed and pasted on 

 a sheet of paper. It may seem a far cry from the making of collars 

 to the study of trees and woods but results proved that the manu- 

 facturer had gone to the right place. 



Under the compound microscope the offending particles were re- 

 vealed to the experts as bits of animal hair, wool, cotton, wood, 

 outer covering of the flax and various other things. A few of the 

 faults were in the flax fibre and in weaving the collar fabric, but 

 most of the substances became attached to the fabric during the 

 process of manufacture and laundering. The unfinished collar ma- 

 terial failed to show as large a percentage of inside and outside 

 faults as was found in the finished collars. This was due to the 

 fact that the washing, drying and starching gave opportunities for 

 other fault specks to be added. In some cases specks became 

 visible only after the collars had been ironed, the color being brought 

 out by the heat. 



As a result of the dendrologist 's report the manufacturer has 

 instituted more critical inspection of the collar material not only 

 in the different stages of manufacture but also in the various 

 processes of washing, starching, ironing, and conveying from one 

 place to another of these operations. It was found that prevention 

 of contact with all sorts of fault materials is possible by providing 

 absolutely clean conditions during cutting, carrying, sewing, and the 

 other operations. 



The introduction of outside faults was laid at the door of the 

 laundries. An inspection revealed a certain amount of carelessness 

 in washing, starching and ironing of collars, cuffs and shirt fronts 

 which resulted in the accumulation of fault specks. Open-carrying 

 vehicles, wood-lined washing machines, and open vibrators are the 

 principal sources of trouble. Wood-lined machines are bound to im- 

 part bits of wood to articles cleansed in them, for the less dense 

 fibres of the spring growth of wood are constantly being worn off. 

 The use of metal lined washers would eliminate this trouble. 



In order to re-establish a boundary line of some property in New 

 Jersey it was desirable to locate a certain witness tree which the 

 surveyor's notes called for. The tree was a birch. As a result of ran- 

 dom lines a nob of a stump was found where the birch tree was sup- 

 posed to have stood. The wood, however, was so old and blackened 

 that its structure was not readily visible and besides, root wood has a 

 somewhat different structure from that of the trunk. A small 

 specimen no bigger than a pea was submitted to the writer for 

 identification. The first step was to place it in water and boil it to 

 remove impurities, soften the tissue and expel the air. A thin 

 section was then cut with a microtome and placed under a micro- 



