24 TIMBER AND SOME OF ITS DISEASES. [CHAP. 



rays of the pines and firs, and the coarse obvious 

 ones of the oaks. 



Again, the prominence or minuteness, or even (Coni- 

 ferae and a few Magnoliaceae) absence, of vessels in 

 the secondary wood afford characters for classification. 



FIG. 8. Transverse section of wood of Tamarindus indica, Linn., selected to show 

 a not uncommon type of Asiatic timber. The annual rings are indistinct, but 

 occasionally indicated by denser tissue (). The vessels are fairly large and few, 

 and scattered much as in Fig. 7, but there are no such broad bands of cells as 

 there. 



The contrast between the extremely small vessels of 

 the box and the very large ones of some oaks and 

 the chestnut, for instance, is too striking to be over- 

 looked. Then, again, in some timbers the vessels 

 are distributed more or less equably throughout the 



