316 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
the consequent impossibility of identification. I knew of a case 
where a wood was highly appreciated for the natural oil it possessed, 
which enabled articles made from it successfully to resist intense - 
friction. A large consignment of this valuable wood was ordered 
and found to be absolutely worthless, being in fact another wood 
altogether. The samples of wood exhibited should bear not only 
the vernacular or local, and the botanical name, but also the name 
by which it is known to commerce. If it is not already known in 
the commercial world, then the name of the wood which it most 
resembles should be given. And in this branch of nomenclature, 
to give a wood a bad name is to spoil its chance of acceptance. 
I do not think, for example, that the market would jump at the 
“stinkwood” of Africa, although the tree, Oreodaphne bullata, which 
produces it is an excellent timber tree, and the wood is extremely 
useful for railway sleepers and the like. Any new wood should be 
launched under a good name, and if the stinkwood were rechristened 
the African oak, a name which it could rightfully adopt, its chance 
of success would at once be doubled. I have not thought it well 
to insist upon the fact of the wood bearing the true botanical 
name of the tree from which it is cut. For this goes without 
saying, and it would be better to leave the name out, or to place 
it thus,—species ?—than to give it a false name which could only 
be misleading. 
Fisres, Dyres, Gums, Resins, ETC. 
Lastly, I come to what are called the minor forest products. It 
is part of the object of an exhibition to show all the resources of 
the subject which it illustrates. There are many trees, such as the 
Canarium strictum, Pterocarpus marsupium, and a host of 
others, of which the gums they exude form not the least important 
part of their products. It cannot be said that the knowledge of 
these is by any means exhaustive. The importer would hail with 
delight any real substitute for gutta percha. However, a mere list 
of the fibres already known to commerce, and in a greater degree a 
list of those which have failed on trial to commend themselves, 
would in itself gratify neither my readers nor myself. These 
have formed pegs on which to hang the introduction of carding 
and cleaning machines innumerable, and the recollection of their 
worthlessness cannot but be painful to many who have embarked 
money in the attempt to establish them. 
