234 FELLING AND CONVERSION OF TIMBER, 



are at least 30 per cent, higher than for wood of ordinary 

 quality, with which the market is glutted. For certain 

 industries the structure of the annual zones of wood and its 

 grain are of the highest importance, as in wood for musical 

 instruments and mast-wood, also in the grain of fancy woods 

 for furniture. The degree of fissibility is also highly im- 

 portant, especially in extensive coniferous forests, where a 

 very large amount of the annual yield of wood is split into 

 various wares ; also in the case of oakwood, suitable for staves. 

 In some forests, as in Bavaria, the trees are examined as to 

 their fissibility before being felled, by trimming off a patch of 

 their sapwood. Not every kind of heart-shake will render 

 a tree unsuitable for timber, and even a heart- shaken tree 

 may be sawn into planks provided the shake is in a line right 

 through the core of the tree; heart-shakes also are often 

 confined to the base of the tree, and may be disposed of 

 by sawing one or two short logs from it. 



Cup-shake and twisted fibre may however render a tree 

 unfit for timber. 



(b) Demands of the Market. 



The mode of conversion to be undertaken depends also 

 on the demands of the market. For wherever there is no 

 demand for any sort of converted timber, nor for any timber 

 at all, it is evident that firewood only will be prepared. The 

 demand is measured by the price, and wherever any assort- 

 ment of timber fetches a higher pi'ice than firewood, conversion 

 into timber should result. The rule should therefore be to 

 produce as much good timber as can be utilised profitably, 

 without including the smaller sized material resulting from 

 thinnings with which the market is soon glutted. The 

 demands however for timber now-a-days are subject to great 

 variations, and there is a considerable demand for poles for 

 paper-making and pit-timber. 



Wherever there are forest-rights to firewood, the outturn in 

 timber is limited by their demands, and frequently, if such 

 rights cannot be compensated in money, wood of the best 

 quality has to be sacrificed to meet these demands. 



On the average in the different German countries, the 



