EUROPEAN TIMBER 39 



when finished. The wood is like the best of hard pine, 

 both in appearance, quality, and uses. The heartwood is 

 reddish brown with yellow sap, it is very resinous, and in 

 Siberia, after fires, the scorched trunks of the trees yield a 

 gum similar to gum arabic, known as Orenburg gum. 

 Some kinds of larch give a yellowish white cross-grained 

 and knotty wood, but it is generally of reddish brown 

 colour and has a straight grain, and is more free from 

 knots than spruce. Used for fencing posts and palings, 

 field gates, scaffold poles, and occasionally in Great Britain 

 for telegraph poles and railway sleepers ; also for floors, 

 stairs, and positions where there is much wear, and in ship 

 and boat building, being light, tough, and lasting. A fence 

 of larch from twenty-five year old trees is said to last from 

 seventeen to twenty years. Great quantities were used for 

 piling and building work in Venice and other Italian cities 

 in past centuries, and many noted Italian pictures by the 

 old masters have been painted on panels of larch. It will 

 not absorb creosote so readily as pine. 



Weight up to 40 Ibs. per cubic foot, the white variety 

 being much the lighter. Larch is the source of the Venice 

 turpentine of commerce. 



English Oak, of which there are two or three varieties 

 distinguished by botanists, the stalk-fruited or common 

 oak (Qnercus pedunculata), Fig. 9, and the cluster-fruited, 

 sessile, or bay oak (Q. sessiliftora) . The durmast oak, which 

 is found in the New Forest, would appear to be only a 

 variety of the Q. sessiliftora. 



The two first named are the prevailing oaks of Northern 

 Europe, although the common oak is the more plentiful in 

 Great Britain, France, and Germany, and its finest develop- 

 ment is found in Hungary. It grows as far south as 

 Central Spain. 



