CHAPTER II 

 HOW TO TELL THE WOODS 



MUCH is heard today about the use of substitutes 

 for wood. Concrete ties and telephone poles are to 

 some degree taking the place of the oak, chestnut and 

 white cedar, etc.; furniture is being made from steel 

 and brass, and a wooden bedstead is quite rare in this 

 age of brass and iron. Nevertheless on account of its 

 cheapness and workability wood always will be in demand 

 for certain uses and everyone should be able to recog- 

 nize the more common kinds of wood from their appear- 

 ance and structure wherever they may be found. 



Of the 40,000,000,000 board feet of timber sawed 

 each year three-fourths comes from the evergreen trees 

 and is therefore considered softwood, for the lumber- 

 men call every kind of wood obtained from an evergreen 

 tree soft, while the boards sawed from broadleaved trees 

 are called hardwoods regardless of the actual hardness. 

 In some cases, however, hardwoods like poplar and 

 basswood are softer than longleaf pine. The exten- 

 sive use of the softwoods is not alone due to the fact 

 that the supply is more plentiful of the timber now 

 standing in the United States four-fifths is coniferous 

 but as a rule such timber is more easily worked and 

 holds its shape better. In all about one hundred and 

 fifty species are used in the lumber trade, but only 

 forty to fifty are extensively used, and of these a few 

 of the more common will be described. When timber 

 is in the log, the bark can be of great assistance in 



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