270 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Boulger's statement as to its freedom from insect attack, yet the furniture which 

 I have had made from three of the trees in question is distinctly superior to 

 that of common walnut, and as good as imported black walnut, in colour ; and when 

 properly seasoned, for which three or four years should be allowed, as good cabinet- 

 maker's wood as the best Circassian or Italian walnut: and Unwin,' quoting Nord- 

 linger and Mayr, says that the timber of trees grown in Germany has the same 

 specific gravity and the same beautifully coloured heartwood as in America. I 

 am informed by experienced cabinetmakers and timber merchants that the colour and 

 quality of the wood now imported is, either on account of its being younger or grown 

 in different localities, inferior to what it used to be when first introduced to this 

 market, and Mr. A. Howard told me that he could not buy American timber of better 

 quality than that of a tree blown down at Albury which was given me by the Duke 

 of Northumberland. It takes a beautiful polish either with oil or French polish, has 

 not warped in the least degree, and has in many cases a beautifully variegated figure. 

 The sapwood is thick and of a paler colour, and should not be used in first-class work 

 any more than that of the common walnut, which is always attacked sooner or later 

 by the larvae of a woodboring beetle. 



From what I saw of it in America, I believe it to be extremely durable when 

 exposed to the weather, as it lasts long in fences, and large canoes were made from 

 it, whilst it was the favourite wood for furniture until its increasing scarcity and 

 price caused it to be superseded by oak and mahogany. 



Old trees often show a beautiful wavy grain, as well as a variety of markings, 

 and from the forks and burrs veneers are cut, which, though of a different colour, are 

 equal in beauty and pattern to mahogany or satinwood. 



Cobbett ^ states, though he does not appear to have seen it himself, that there 

 was at New York part of a black walnut trunk, which measured 36 feet round at 

 the base, and had been scooped out and used as a bar-room, and afterwards as 

 a grocer's shop, and that this tree, if it had been sawed into inch boards, would 

 have yielded 50,000 feet, worth at that time $1500, but this seems exaggerated; 

 though Loudon states (p. 1438) that a tree, perhaps the same as the one Cobbett 

 speaks of, and grown on the south side of Lake Erie, was exhibited in London in 

 1827, which was 12 feet in diameter, hollowed out and furnished as a sitting-room. 



(H. J. E.) 



Future Forest Trees, 38 (1905). Woodlands, Art. 553. 



