so 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



presideut; Robert Orr, vice president; J. H. 

 Baskette, secretary anti treasurer. Colonel 

 Prewitt died twenty years ago; Major Spurr 

 still' retains an interest in the eompany. 



The plant occupies about thirty acres of 

 ground and comprises yards, saw mill, plan- 

 ing mill, carpenter shop and bucket fac- 

 lory. Poplar, oak and asli lumber, red 

 cedar ware, ash churns, white oak well 

 buckets and packing pails of every descrip- 

 tion constitute the diversified line of prod- 

 ucts turned out by this concern. The 

 Prewitt-Spurr Manufacturing Company 

 operates the only cedar bucket factory in 

 the world. 



Felling of a Noted Oak. 



The famous big tree of Lafayette, Ind., 

 under whose branches Gen. "William Henry 

 Harrison slept while on his way to the bat- 

 tle of Tippecanoe, has been cut down be- 

 cause the top boughs wei"e constantly falling 

 awa}-, menacing life and property. The 

 tree which is over 200 years old, stood 

 directly in the middle of a highway which 

 was built in 1S72, and which was divided 

 around the tree to save it on account of its 

 history and great size. In years past a 

 dense forest surrounded the tree, but civil- 

 ization has made such inroads on the native 

 woods that but few trees remain near it. 

 For years the great tree was celebrated ss 

 a trysting place; hundreds of travelers have 

 stopped to rest in its shade, and visitors 

 have been taken to see it, as one of the 

 points of interest about the city. It stood 

 115 feet high, and on its old trunk could 

 be seen traces of high water, the Wabash 

 flowing but a. few feet from it. For years 

 the children of Lafayette have used the big 

 oak to denote direction. It is supposed to 

 have marked the site of an Indian village, 

 for many arrow heads and other weapons 

 have been unearthed near it. It is said that 

 Tecumseh held many a council tire beside it. 

 Its mammoth trunk was covered with signs 

 and posters and carving, and it is probable 

 that the mutilation to which it was sub- 

 jected was responsible for its decay. 



Cypress Mine on the Sabine. 



Here is one of the weird stories that 

 conies from the daily press, alleged to have 

 been related by the recruiting sergeant of 

 a Louisiana sawmill: 



"Thi: strangest thing I know of in the 

 business is a cypress mine in the Sabine 

 river. Straight goods; you needn't laugh! 

 There is an old fellow over on that stream 

 who has a regular mine and who manages 

 to make a very fair living out of it. I do 

 not know how much ore he has in sight, or 

 rather out of sight; probably he does not 

 know fully himself, but he has been working 

 the mine for a number of years and apjjar- 

 ently the supply is as good as ever. He 

 splits shingles by hand and makes about 

 three dollars day, year in and year out. I 

 have been at his mint and have seen sticks 

 of cypress of a diameter which at the 



present time cannot be secured along any of 

 the southern rivers. I have heard rumors 

 that he had something to do with the sink- 

 ing of a number of cypress rafts which mys- 

 teriously disappeared from the Sabine river 

 a great many years ago, but such stories are 

 very vague and no credit can be placed in 

 them on account of the length of time 

 which has elapsed." 



At one time this product was an important 

 article of export from the- Canaries. 



Poisoning from Wood. 



So strange an effect on persons has a cer- 

 tain rare wood, brought from the Philip- 

 pines to a Cambridge, Mass., furniture fac- 

 toi'v, that twenty-six employees have been 

 made ill by it, says the Washington Post. A 

 special order of 15,000 feet of the wood was 

 imported, to be made into furniture for a 

 New York tirm, to use in a handsome home 

 in Buffalo. The workmen who had inhaled 

 the dust, or whose hands had come in con- 

 tact with the wood, were affected by a sort 

 of asthma, and a very irritating- rash broke 

 out on the arms, or wherever perspiration 

 had formed. The strange wood is known as 

 tonquin, is dark in color, and reseinbles En- 

 glish oak, having nearly the same grain and 

 beautiful figures, and sparkling like silver 

 when placed under a strong light. Em- 

 ployees w-ere so annoyed and the wood 

 caused so much trouble generally, that the 

 firm has r.efused to have any more in the 

 factory, although- when finished, nothing 

 disagreeable can be detected in the material. 



Mining Oaks in England. 



At Yaxley, Petersborough, has been dis- 

 covered what is supposed to be a buried 

 forest. At a depth of seven feet have been 

 found a number of oaks which have lain 

 hidden for perhaps 2,000 years. Most of 

 them are almost perfect in condition, and 

 are being sold to veneer and furniture man- 

 ufacturers, i-iighty trees have been raised 

 and hundreds more are still untouched. In 

 nearly all cases, the roots are attached. The 

 trees are in clusters of three or four, point- 

 ing in different directions, and in some in- 

 stances they lie across each other. The 

 wood is exceedingly hard, and can only be 

 worked by machinery, as it turns the edge of 

 an axe. William Waldorf Astor is having 

 some of them employed in the construction 

 of his new mansion. 



The Oldest Tree in the World. 



The dragon trees of the Canary islands 

 are said to be among the oldest specimens 

 of tree life in the world. TJie famous 

 dragon tree of Teneriffe is credited with be- 

 ing from 4,000 to 6,000 years old, or as an- 

 cient as are the Pyram.ids of Egypt. It 

 survived intact until 1819, when a terrific 

 hurricane broke off one of the great 

 branches. In 1867 the remaining branches- 

 were stripped from the trunk, leaving it 

 naked and alone. The name dragon tree 

 is derived from a reddish exudation known 

 as dragon's blood, supposed to have been 

 used centuries ago in embalming the dead. 



Passing of Historic Philadelphia Tree. 



Another of the famous old rims in Inde- 

 pendence Square, Philadelphia, has been 

 felled because of the ravages of old age. 

 It is thought to have been one of the hun- 

 dred elms brought there from New York in 

 1785. Death, the dry rot of age, and fierce 

 storms have greatly reducefl the number of 

 lai'ge trees in the Square of late years. The 

 last one to go was a magnificent specimen 

 of its kind, being about three feet in diam- 

 eter and between sixty and seventy feet 

 high. It will require many years for the 

 younger elms in the park, among which is 

 the young tree planted by General Grant, to 

 leaeh this great size. 



Object to Forest Keserve. 



The proposed creation of the Cabinet for- 

 est reservation, embracing about half the 

 area of Sanders county, a large portion of 

 Flathead county, and quite a slice of Koote- 

 nai county, is meeting with strenuous objec- 

 tions on the part of Idaho citizens of the 

 districts named. It is alleged that the pro- 

 posed forest reservation comes within six 

 miles of the town of Plains, and within a 

 mile of the town of Thompson, and it is 

 said to contain a large quantity of good 

 agricultural lands. Idaho citizens contend 

 that' setting apart such a large timber reser- 

 vation will materially interfere with the 

 settling and development of the country. 



Two Big Ohio Trees. 



A loc.il paper states that a white oak tree, 

 the largest felled in Trumbull county, Ohio, 

 for the past fifteen years, was recently 

 brought to the Helman timber mill at War- 

 ren, O. The trunk measured sixty-two feet 

 in length, seven feet in diameter, and con- 

 tained 7,365 feet of lumber. The farmer on 

 whose land it grew received $100 for the 

 tree. Jt was over 1,000 years old. 



The delivery of an elm log at Findlaj-, 0., 

 is recently- recorded, which was thirteen feet 

 in length, and scaled 1,573 feet. It grew 

 in what remains of the old black swamp 

 country along the Hancock-Wood county 

 line. It was consigned to the Buckeye 

 Stave Factoiy. 



Scarcity of Brierwood. 



It is said that the supply of French brier 

 loot is practically exhausted. Formerly 

 large quantities were obtained from the 

 Department of the Landes and from the 

 Pyrenees mountains. The current supply of 

 imported brier now conies largely from Scot- 

 land, but the pipes are manufactured at St. 

 Claude in the Department of Jura, near the 

 Swiss border. During the past few years 

 large quantities of the burly roots of ivy, 

 laurel and rhododendron have been har- 

 vested in. the mountains of eastern Tennes- 

 see and western North Carolina and ex- 

 ported to France as a substitute for French 

 brier in the manufacture of wooden pipes. 



