ADVENTURES IN THE MAHOGANY FORESTS 



dining-rooin table has been made from mahogany, but 

 has he ever thought for one moment that he actually 

 depended for his transport on Equatorial forest prod- 

 ucts? It may never have struck him that his automobile, 

 or the train in which he travels to business each day 

 might not have been possible but for mahogany. But he 

 will perhaps ask how this can be. Certainly motor cars 

 and locomotives are not made from wood, but many of 

 the component parts are made from castings and the 

 patterns are in turn made from mahogany. Mahogany 

 is the best known wood for pattern making. For this 

 reason, a continuous supply of mahogany is vital for 

 many of the key industries. The man in the street merely 

 looks upon mahogany as a good furniture wood. Indeed, 

 mahogany is used as a trade name covering a large range 

 of species used in the manufacture of furniture which 

 possess no characteristic of mahogany but are capable 

 of taking mahogany stain. The largest part of the so- 

 called mahogany furniture sold today is not mahogany. 

 It may be stained American white wood, kauri pine, 

 beech, plane, lime or the bass wood of America, and 

 sometimes even deal. True mahogany is becoming in- 

 creasingly difficult to obtain. Today we have to go far 

 afield for the best wood, and it is obvious that the far- 

 ther one has to go from floating rivers or other means of 

 transport, the more expensive it becomes. 



One of the last best mahogany forests of the world 

 is in the Southern Provinces of Nigeria. As Conservator 

 of Forests under the Government, the writer has been 



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