KAURI PINE 



" pleasant and agreeable when worked " (60). Taste rather bit- 

 ter. Burns very well, with a long, quiet, smoky flame and a 

 strong, agreeable, cedar-like aroma : embers glow in still air : 

 ash blackish. Solution with alcohol faint brown : with water 

 colourless. 



Grain. Extremely fine, even, and smooth. Surface lustrous, 

 satiny : the ground-tissue glossy, but the rays dull. 



Bark. Smooth, not fissured : i-ii inch thick : woody : one 

 layer : red, and covered with papillae. 



Uses, etc. " Generally sound, polishes well, free from knots, 

 wears evenly, shrinks very little, much more durable than any 

 other Pine . . . yacht-decks . . . one of the best woods a car- 

 penter can take in hand . . . generally free from defects " (60). 

 Laslett gives much valuable information. " Of great size, . . . 

 160 ft. high by 15 or even 24 ft. diameter " (91). " Stronger 

 and more durable than the best Red Deal, . . . tougher and 

 more elastic than the American Spruce, while it is more easily 

 worked than the Red- wood of California " (59). This last is 

 perhaps a little overdrawn. There is striking similarity in the 

 appearance of this wood to that of Liquidambar styraciflua (No. 

 97). If not too costly Kauri should make good paving blocks. 

 " Many of the wooden houses of Auckland erected half a cen- 

 tury ago are still standing, the timber showing no signs of 

 decay " (59). 



Authorities. Holtzapffel (48), p. 100. Laslett (60), p. 388. 

 Ditto (61), p. 433. Stevenson (113), p. 211. Kew Cat. Conif. 

 (58), p. 59- Smith (in), p. 148. Bailey (15), p. 135. Perceval 

 (91), p. 24. Kirk (59). 



Colour. Whitish-brown, brownish or reddish-brown. Pale 

 straw " (61). " Yellowish white or straw " (113). Sharply de- 

 fined from the sap-wood, which is about from 3-5 inches wide or 

 " more on poorly grown trees " (61). 



Anatomical Characters. Transverse section : 



Pores or resin-canals absent. 



Rays. Just visible upon a clean cut section, but seem more 

 prominent when the wood is left rough from the saw, when they 

 may be mistaken for the ring- boundaries. Size 5 : red : contrast 

 well with and are denser than the ground-tissue : tough, and can 

 be separated like threads from a very thin section : taper rapidly : 

 many, but very irregular, about 1-8 per mm. 



Rings. Clear at times, but not in all specimens : boundary a 

 line of slight contrast : no smoky zones. 



Ground-tissue. Cells in radial rows, irregular in size one row 

 with another, but the cells in each row diminish a little in size 

 from within outwards. 



Pith. ? 



263 



