USES OF CONIFEROUS WOOD. 89 



hundred years, during which the timber of the Prumnopitys remained 

 sound, and was afterwards split into posts for fencing purposes.* 



A piece of the wood of Juniperus oxycedrus was unearthed in 1884 

 by Mr. C. H. Sharman in the island of Madeira, where this species 

 attains timber-like size. It had lain in the ground without life but 

 undecayed, and had retained its peculiar perfume during four hundred 

 years, f 



The FRAGRANCE of the wood of many coniferous trees is powerful, 

 and generally of a resinous odour, in many instances it is also 

 agreeable and even useful. Thus the wood of the Keel Cedar, used 

 in the manufacture of pencils, is a familiar example of agreeable 

 fragrance without being too powerful; the wood of the Cembra Pine 

 is much used for wainscotting and the inlaying of wardrobes, on 

 account of its odour being not only agreeable, but also obnoxious to 

 insects. The woods of the Deodar Cedar, Yellow Cypress, the 

 American Arbor Vitse, the Chilian Libocedrus and the Spanish 

 Juniper are all agreeably fragrant and more or less obnoxious to 

 insects. 



The timber of coniferous trees is used throughout the temperate 

 regions of the world for well-nigh every purpose for which wood 

 is in request ; for house-building almost to the exclusion of every 

 other kind ; for out-of-door carpentry of every description ; for railway 

 ties and street paving ; for joinery and indoor fittings ; for the 

 coarser kinds of furniture, boxes for packing, frames and backs of 

 musical instruments, children's toys and turnery. And within the 

 last few years a new industry has arisen which has for its object 

 the conversion of coniferous wood into pulp for the manufacture of 

 pasteboard and paper. 



The coarser kinds of printing paper, packing paper and pasteboard 

 are made from wood pulp obtained chiefly from Pine and Spruce wood. 

 Paper manufactured from the wood of the Red Cedar (Juniperus 

 riri/iniana) is found to be useful for underlaying carpets and for 

 wrapping wool, fur, and other articles liable to be injured by moths 

 which are driven away by the peculiar odour of the wood. The 

 wood from which this paper is made is chiefly the waste of the 

 pencil factories. J In the north-eastern States of North America, the 

 upper part of the trunk, as well as the branches and chips of the 

 Pine and Spruce trees, are gathered up and ground into pulp. 

 Formerly these were left by the lumbermen, and by the middle of 

 the following summer they became thoroughly dry and afforded the 

 best material for starting a great fire when a careless hunter or tramp 

 should happen to drop a lighted match ; for these fires Avhich have 

 done such immense injury can generally be traced to this source. f 

 Two methods are chiefly followed in the preparation of wood-pulp^ 



* Kirk, Forest Flora of New Zealand, p. 6. 

 t Gardeners' Chronicle, XXIII. (1885), p. 369. 



J English Mechanic ex Gardeners' Chronicle, V. s. 3. (1889), p. 23. 

 Garden and Forest, I. (1888), p. 290. 



