360 QUALITY OF TIMBEK. 



ture beacL,, on the contrary, are well known to produce far bet- 

 ter timber than those grown in the woods, and there are few trees 

 to which the remark is not equally applicable.* 



Another advantage of the artificially regulated forest is, that it 

 admits of such grading of the ground as to favor the retention or 

 discharge of water at will, while the facilities it affords for select- 

 ing and duly proportioning, as well as properly spacing, and from 



* It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees of slow 

 vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of those common- 

 places by which men love to shield themselves from the labor of painstaking 

 observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it may be doubted 

 whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are slow of growth ; but 

 while the timber of some of them is firm and durable, that of others is light, 

 brittle and perishable. The hemlock-spruce is slower of growth than the 

 pines, but its wood is of very little value. The pasture oak and beech show a 

 breadth of grain — and, of course, an annual increment — twice as great as trees 

 of the same species grown in the woods, and furnish timber greatly superior 

 in quality to that of forest-grown trees of the same kind. The American 

 locust, Bohinia pseudacacia, the wood of which is of extreme toughness and 

 durability, is, of all trees indigenous to Northeastern America, by far the most 

 rapid in growth. Some of the species of the Australian Eucalyptus furnish 

 wood of remarkable strength and durability, and yet the eucalyptus is sur- 

 passed by no known tree in rapidity of growth. " The American Catalpa," 

 I quote again from Prof. Sargent, " is an excellent example of a fast-growing 

 tree, producing durable wood. No American forest-tree grows faster than 

 the Catalpa, while the power of its wood to resist decay is almost fabulous." 



As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts, I 

 may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick and plaster are almost the only 

 materials used in architecture, and where the ' ' hollow ware " kitchen imple- 

 ments are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for working wood are of a 

 very inferior description, and the locust timber is found too hard for their 

 temper. At the same time the work of the Italian stipettai, or cabinet-makers 

 and carvers in wood, who take pains to provide themselves with tools of better 

 metal, is wholly unsurpassed in finish and in accuracy of adjustment as well 

 as in taste. Southey states, in Espriella's Letters, that when a small quantity 

 of mahogany was brought to England, early in the last century, the cabinet- 

 makers were unable to use it, from the defective temper of their tools, until 

 the demand for furniture from the new wood compelled them to improve the 

 quality of their implements. In America, the cheapness of wood long made 

 it the preferable material for almost all purposes to which it could by any 

 possibility be applied. The mechanical cutlery and artisans' tools of the 

 United States are of admirable temper, finish and convenience, and no wood 

 is too hard, or otherwise too refractory, to be wrought with great facility, 

 both by hand-tools and by the multitude of ingenious machines which the 

 Americans have invented for this purpose. 



