194 Bulletin 194 



THE STRUCTURE AND IDENTIFICATION OF OUR COM- 

 MON LUMBER WOODS 



By C. H. Otis 



Common as wood is in its varied forms and uses, comparatively 

 few jDeople are able to distinguish our familiar trees when sawed into 

 lumber and fashioned into houses, furniture and other manufactured 

 products. Yet each wood has characteristics of color, odor, graining, 

 weight, hardness, strength and minute structure peculiar to itself which 

 distinguish it from other woods. 



The value of each kind of w^ood for building purposes and every 

 other use is determined to a large extent by its characteristics. These, 

 taken in connection with the available supply of any particular timber 

 in the country, govern the value or cost of that timber in the lumber 

 market. So certain trees, like oak and cedar, because of their durability 

 in contact with the soil, make admirable fence posts; spruce and the 

 broad-leaved white birch and cottonwood possess structural qualities 

 adapting them to the manufacture of paper pulp ; hickory, very strong, 

 tough and straight-grained, has long been valued for carriage and 

 wagon stock and tool handles. Many examples might here be cited to 

 show how various woods are peculiarly adapted to certain uses to a 

 greater extent than are others. Again, some species, on account of 

 our wasteful methods of lumbering, failure to provide means of re- 

 production and lack of restriction as to particular uses, have become 

 so scarce that substitutes are offered in the markets to take their places. 

 To such an extent has. this become true that methods are in use to 

 imitate the grain and color of some of the more depleted but valuable 

 woods. Thus birch enters very largely into the composition of a great 

 deal of so-called modern mahogany furniture, and cheap woods are 

 often grained to imitate quarter-sawed white oak. 



With the great variety of useful woods to be found in any lumber 

 yard, it is important that consumers of wood in any form should be 

 able to identify the different kinds offered so that they may choose 

 those woods best suited to their particular needs and that they may 

 obtain them and not lumber similar in appearance but otherwise of 

 inferior qualifications. 



Wood structure and the arrangement of the elements making up 

 the woody tissues constitute the basis of the identification and use of 

 timber. By structure is meant the relative si^e, shape and form of the 



