310 THE TIMBERS OF THE WORLD 



" Trees of average size attain the height of 60 to 80 feet, with an 

 average diameter of 2 to 3 feet. The timber is brownish-red in colour, 

 very hard, dense, strong and durable. . . . For railway sleepers ... is 

 deemed to rank equal to jarrah, and is also used for short piles and for 

 bridge and wharf planking, etc., in permanent works when conveniently 

 procurable. It has been, and continues to be, freely and very success- 

 fully employed for both wheelwrights' and millwrights' work, for which 

 its extreme hardness, especially when seasoned, is particularly appreciated. 

 It is used for ribs, bends, and knees in lugger and boat-building, (and) 

 for mining timbers ; while it serves to provide very durable fencing, 

 stockyards and other settlers' wants. . . . As in other Eucalypts, the 

 heart-wood core is to be avoided. Specifications for cut timbers should 

 therefore require freedom from heart-wood, except in the case of piles, 

 which are better round than squared. 



" With regard to the durabiUty of wandoo, the Railway Department, 

 in reporting the result of sleepers laid on the Newcastle [Western 

 Australia] line as a test, states : ' About 150 of these were put in about 

 seventeen or eighteen years ago when the Une was constructed. Fully 90 

 per cent of them are, to all appearance, as good as new, being very hard 

 and sound, and they will in all probability last yet for many years. A few 

 of the sleepers were slightly decayed on the outside, but on scraping off 

 about a quarter of an inch the remainder of the timber was found in 

 each instance to be perfectly sound. . . . The wood is not liable to 

 attack by dry rot unless under conditions exceptionally favourable to its 

 development.' " 



C. E. Lane-Poole says that " its main use, however, is for waggon 

 scantlings for the railway stock for the Government Railways of the State. 

 It gives a life of twenty-five years in under-carriages of trucks. The top 

 plank of these trucks is always made of wandoo, which stands the wear 

 of the loading and unloading better than steel ; also the stanchions of 

 the trucks are of wandoo. A remarkable quality which this timber 

 possesses is that when used in conjunction with steel there is no chemical 

 action between the wood and the metal. Bolts have been taken from 

 the under-frames of trucks after twenty years' use, and been found to 

 be quite as clean as when put there, while the auger marks were still 

 visible in the holes." 



Washiba. Source unknown. Weight, 55 lbs. (Stone). Guiana, 

 Guadeloupe. 



Stone describes the wood as a beautiful red, splashed with yellow, 

 the grain moderately fine and open, and the surface rather lustrous. 

 It is exceedingly tough and elastic, and is used for bows and fishing rods. 

 It will square 30 inches free of sap-wood, by 20 feet long. 



