HARDWOOD RECORD 



31 



land ill this region after it has been cleared 

 of its tree growth. Agriculture follows 

 rapidly upon the heels of the millman in 

 this section, as the land is inost valuable 

 fbr farming purposes. 



The Durability of Cypress 

 So many examples of the lasting qual- 

 ities of cypress have been recited to the 

 lumber trade of the countrj- that little in- 

 terest attaches to incidents of this sort un- 

 less they are really exceptional and abso- 

 lutely authentic. The illustration herewith 

 shown is a very interesting one. This is a 

 section of a cypress water pipe which was 

 taken up in the streets of New Orleans and 

 was photographed by C. C. Crew, manager 

 of the A. Wycdcoff & Son Company of Alex 

 andria, La., manufacturer of built-up 

 cypress water pipes. The section shown is 

 from a solid bored pipe which was laid in 

 1811. From the condition of the piece on 

 careful examination it would seem that it 

 was not over two or three years old, as the 

 wood is perfectly sound and without a sign 

 of decay. The piece was taken from a long 

 section of bored pipe showing that even so 

 many years ago the making of hollow 

 columns and pipes was well understood and 

 was executed with skill. The Wyckoff con- 

 cern is now engaged in the manufacture of 

 pipe built-up of staves turned, butt-jointed 

 and wrapped about with hard iron bands. 



SECTION OF CYPRESS WATER PIPE TAKEN 

 i'-ROM STREET IN NEW ORLEANS- 

 LAID IN 1811 



These pipes possess all the advantages of 

 the old style pipe for lasting qualities and 

 have the added advantage of being less 

 than one-fourth the weight of the old solid 

 kind. 



True and Spurious J\Iahogani; 



By C. D. MELL, Assistant Dendrologist, U. S. Forest Service 



The St. Louis Lumberman of July 1, 1910, 

 contained an article entitled "Where Our 

 Mahogany Comes From." The figures given 

 in this article were from the last Annual Re- 

 port of the Bureau of Statistics, Department 

 of Commerce and Labor, and are, therefore, 

 as nearly correct as are obtainable so far as 

 the total amount is concerned. This bureau 

 derives its figures from the custom-house re- 

 ports and, owing to the very large number 

 of classifications of imports — about 500 — it 

 has found it impracticable to make closer or 

 smaller classifications. However, certain im- 

 portant explanations are necessary in order 

 to make it perfectly clear that under ma- 

 hogany have been included a number of dif- 

 ferent species of woods. 



The term ' ' mahogany ' ' has become a trade 

 name and is used in a general way, which 

 seems no longer justifiable. It is not used in 

 Ihe same general and proper sense that the 

 word "oak" is used in referring to any of 

 the thirty-four well-known North American 

 species of that wood. The name oak is 

 ascribed to other woods, such as some of the 

 oucalypts known in Europe as American oak, 

 the good qualities of which the woods of this 

 genus are known to possess. The term applies 

 also to other woods, such as Indian oak or 

 teak, Tectona grandis (L.), bull oak, forest 

 oak, he oak, she oak and swamp oak, which 

 arc all common names for the different species 

 of Casvarina, trees native to tropical and 



subtropical regions and not true oaks. These, 

 together with a great many woods from other 

 genera, arc all classed with the oaks, gen- 

 erally speaking, but they are not oaks 

 (Quercus) in the botanical sense any more 

 than the wood of the beech or plane tree and, 

 therefore, should be kept separate in an 

 itemized statement of exports and imports, 

 otherwise the classification will not be very 

 helpful. 



True mahogany, Swietenia mahogoni 

 (Jacq.) stands in a class by itself, and all 

 other woods palmed off on the public as such 

 are substitutes, and in most cases inferior 

 ones. There is only one species of the genus 

 yielding the true mahogany, and this is na- 

 tive to a rather restricted territory in the 

 New World, including the West Indies, 

 Mexico, Central America and the northern 

 jiart of South America. 



This unexcelled cabinet timber has been 

 exploited for about two hundred years, and 

 large and accessible trees are now becoming 

 very scarce. Since its first importation into 

 England in its unmanufactured state in 1724, 

 the yearly demand has been many times 

 greater than the supply, and for this reason 

 general timber brokers have, of necessity, 

 been endeavoring to substitute other woods 

 somewhat similar in appearance, until now 

 there are more than twenty such substitutes 

 or imitation mahoganies shipped to Liverpool, 

 London and certain American ports under the 



comprehensive trade n;inie of mahogany. 



The woods forming the bulk of the ma- 

 hogany shipments dilfcr very widely from 

 true mahogany. A closely related wood such 

 as the hie, jallow, or dubina, names given 

 by the natives of West Africa to a tree 

 botanically known as Khatja scnegalcnsis (A. 

 .fuss.), resembles the true mahogany and is 

 generally called African or Gambia ma- 

 hogany, but it docs not deserve to be called 

 mahogany any more than chestnut deserves 

 to be called oak, yet these two woods are just 

 as closely related as the hie of Africa and 

 the mahogany of the western hemisphere. The 

 same is true of a number of other substitutes, 

 chief among which are certain species of the 

 genera Soymida, Chukrassia, Trichilia, Guarca 

 and Cedrela. Besides these there are other 

 woods called mahogany which do not bear 

 such close relationship to the true mahogany, 

 lint which are, however, bought and sold as 

 such. Among these are padouk (Fterocarpus 

 iiidicus, Willd.) and palo maria (Calophyllum 

 inophyllum, L.). There are also a number of 

 South American woods shipped to the United 

 States and to Europe as mahogany, but they 

 are no more related to the true mahogany 

 than the black walnut is to the Kentucky 

 coffee tree, yet the trade statistics above cited 

 include these woods with the true mahogany. 

 A number of South American woods are 

 known as mahogany, chief among which are 

 Cedrela, Guarea, Cariniana, Persea, Swartsia 

 and Ccesalpinia, while from Australia still 

 other woods are sold as mahogany, particu- 

 larly certain species of Eucalyptus and Tris- 

 tana. 



If a dealer were to fill an order for a large 

 quantity of ash with chestnut, he would be 

 criminally liable to fine and punishment by 

 law. Tile deliberate substitution of various 

 woods for mahogany is no less a fraud, and 

 yet general timber brokers nuike a practice 

 of doing just this thing. To disguise these 

 woods so that they look like mahogany is a 

 matter that cabinet and furniture makers 

 have become expert in, and the public who 

 buy the manufactured article fail to get 

 what they bargain for. 



The trade in America is just as prone to 

 this evil of substitution as that in Europe. 

 There are timber merchants on both ?ides of 

 the Atlantic who handle immense quantities 

 of mahogany annually, and it is probable that 

 only a small quantity of true mahogany logs 

 is consigned to them. The question arises 

 now, what is the remedy for this? It lies 

 largely in a more liberal education of the 

 people who nearly always accept the word of 

 the furniture dealers as the truth. As stated 

 above, true mahogany is becoming scarce, and 

 the market price has soared so high that the 

 margin of profit is becoming small and, of 

 course, the smaller the profit the greater the 

 temptation to substitute other cheaper woods 

 for it. Men traveling for furniture houses 

 visit the Retailers and offer solid mahogany 

 furniture a few dollars cheaper than the regu- 

 l.-ir market price. The retailers who made the 



