HARDWOOD RECORD 



29 



vli.Mi cdIiI caliulatioii is applieil to the problem it is plain tliat :n-eoiiiit was iloubtless written Ion;; afii-r the actual transaction, by 

 III. -tiling was wrong: for 150,000 men conUl not liavc spent sev- some one desirous of explaining away and glossing over Solomon's 

 .1 years in cutting and assembling three carloads of lumber. The poor business ability if not his political misfortunes. 



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The Lightest of ISSative M/^oods 



It" askfil ti) name, offhand, the lightest native wood of the United 

 -• itos, most persons would give the place to white pine; yet there 

 • several that are lighter, and some of them are in common 

 use. Sugar pine (Pinus lambcrtianaj and knobcone pine (Pimm 

 attenuato). both of California, are lighter. Some of the spruces 

 and several of the lirs weigh less. The northern white cedar (Thuja 

 occide'itolis) and southern white cedar (Cluimaccyparis thyoides), 

 the former growing in the northern states and the latter in the 

 eastern, lack considerable of tipping the scales with white pine. The 

 California bigtree, the largest in the worM (Sequoia washiiigtoiiiana) 

 is still lighter than the cedars. All the foregoing are softwoods. 

 Some of the hardwoods are as light or lighter. Among these is 

 the West Indies birch or gumbo limbo (Burscna simaruba), which 

 Is not a birch or closely related to that genus. It grows in southern 

 Florida. Balm of Gilead (Populus haUamif era ) , of the northern 

 states, is lighter than white pine: and the Florida golden fig (Ficus 

 aurea) is much lighter. The S])anish bayonet (y¥ucca treculeana) 

 of the Southwest and giant cactus (Cercus gigantcus) of Arizona 

 fall below white pine in weight. 



No one of these is the lightest wood. The one which is clearly 

 entitled to that honor may be found in considerable quantity in 

 some of the swamps of Butler and Dunklin counties, Missouri. It 

 is likewise native in the gloomy swanii)s which stretch inland on 

 both siiles of the Appalachicola river, near its mouth, in Florida. 

 Xne same tree occurs in swamps along the Brazos river in Texas. 



It is generally known as leitneria, or corkwood (Lcitneria flori- 

 dana.). It has little more than one-third of the weight of kiln-dried 

 white pine. In addition to being the lightest wood of the United 

 States, the tree is among the smallest. Xo trunk exceeding twenty 

 feet in height has ever been reported, and the extreme diameter is 

 four or five inches. Usual sizes are much less than this; and -would 

 ordinarily be clas.sed as mere shrubs. It is called corkwood because 

 fishermen among the reefs and channels along the Florida coast have 

 long useil the wood, in place of corks, to float their fish nets, and 

 the Seminole Indians made similar use of it long before. 



The tree is deciduous, that is, it sheds its leaves yearly. The 

 leaves are smooth-eilged, from four to siS inches long, rather nar- 

 row. The form and general appearance of the flowers bear some 

 resemblance to those of river birch, and they appear in Missouri in 

 March, but earlier in Florida. The fruit is a drupe — a sort of jdum 

 — with a flat seed and with flesh utterly worthless as food for 

 human beings, though birds pick a few of them when nothing better 

 can be had. The drupes are about three-fourths of an inch long, 

 and very slender. The dark gray bark is almost as thin as- paper 

 on branches and small stems, but thickens with age. 



The wood is the mo.st interesting part. It is soft, weak, and 

 exceedingly light. A cubic foot of it weighs little more than a 

 gallon of water. It is pale yellow in color and without trace of 

 heartwood. The tree is of slow growth, and the annual rings are 

 so indistinct that they can be counted only with difficulty. The 

 wood is absolutely without figure, no matter in what way it is cut. 

 Xo use of this wood for cabinet purposes or inlay seems prob- 

 able. It might be employed in the manufacture of artificial limbs, 

 proviiled pieces large enough couhl be procured. It is not known 

 that it has been tested for this use and it may be too weak, or 

 possess properties disqualifying it. At any rate, it might be worth 

 while for some one interested in the business to give it a trial, 

 though probably one of the first discoveries would be that sizes 

 large enough are too scarce, though small stems are abundant 

 enough in certain localities. 



The tree has been known to botanists for nearly a hundred 

 years. Its botanical name, Leitneria, commemorates the sacrifice of 

 a valuable life in studying this species and others in the wilds of 

 Florida. Dr. Leitner, a German botanist, lost his life there during 

 the Seminole war. 



The tree's habit of growing in deep swamps makes it a difficult 

 subject of study. The surroundings are not congenial, and a man 

 traveling for pleasure or recreation will never go where leitneria 

 grows : because he must wade through water, flounder in mud, run 

 the risk of snakes, be tormented by mosquitoes, gnats, and all man- 

 ner of flying, swimming, and creeping things that swarm in swales 

 and lagoons. Fishermen who want the wood for net floats go 

 where it is and get it: and bird hunters with their rubber boots 

 and flat canoes penetrate the drowned lands where the corkwood 

 grows; but few others go there for business or pleasure. 



The scientist, of course, will go anywhere within the range of 

 possibilities in search of facts, and no tree or plant grows too high 

 on mountains or too deep in swamps to escape the searcher after 

 knowledge. A Chicago botanist recently secured a photograph of the 

 leitneria, but in order to do so he was obliged to dig a tree out 

 of the almost impenetrable jungle where the camera could not be 

 brought to bear on it, and replant it in an open space where it 

 could be photographed. This incident throws light on the nature 

 of the places where the tree is at home. 



It is not easy to explain how the leitneria happens to grow in so 

 few places and so far apart. It looks like chance, and yet it is 

 harder to explain how a thing happens by chance than to account 

 for it by means of cause and effect. Three widely-separated points, 

 a thousand miles from one another, are the only known places 

 where this interesting species occurs. It is a solitary species, without 

 a known relative on earth, except certain distant third-cousins. It 

 is a lone family, a lone genus, a lone species; and it has attempted 

 to separate from itself, if such a thing were possible. Some of 

 the leitnerias have their habitat in the gloomy morasses of western 

 Florida ; some took refuge in the swamps of southern Texas ; and 

 the third remnant chose its lonesome home in the dismal lagoons of 

 southeastern Missouri. These swamps are much alike in character; 

 but how did the leitneria happen to be in those three swamps and 

 nowhere else? There are many other regions with drowned lands, 

 mud flats, bogs of mire and jungles of tangled vines and trees; 

 but this species missed all of them, for no known reason, and 

 established itself in three widely-separated places only, and there 

 it lives, a weakling among its associates, for it is not able to grow 

 high enough to reach the sunlight which is shut out by the canopy 

 of other trees. 



The German Idea 



While Uncle Snni is ]irosoiuting people for maintaining retail 

 prices, Germany is making things warm for the price-cutting fra- 

 ternity. As an instance a retailer has been brought into court for 

 having obliterateil a certain identification mark on the goods he 

 sold, by which mark the manufacturer expected to trace price-cut- 

 ters, and was found guilty and liable to heavy damages. 



The defendant was found guilty on the application of the law of 

 unfair competition, which makes liable anyone whose business acts 

 are sucfi as to offend good morals. He was found guilty of injuring 

 trade of his competitors by selling below the contract price, by 

 which they were likewise bound, and by causing damage to the manu- 

 facturer's business by giving rise to the belief that its goods could 

 be biiutrlit at ililViTcnt jiriii's at retail instead of at a uniform price. 



