A SYSTEMATIC STUDY 



OF THE 



SPECIES WHOSE WOODS ARE REPRESENTED IN THE ACCOMPANYING 



SECTIONS. 



The timbers comprised in the series which this text is designed to accom- 

 pany belong to what are known, botanically speaking, as Flowering and 

 mostly Exogenous Plants. At the outset, therefore, we will, once for all, 

 define these groups ; and, as the characters herein given are equally true 

 of all the species enumerated in the following pages, they need not be 

 repeated in the further definition of the various sub-groups and speoies. 



FLOWERING OR PHJENOGAMOUS PLANTS. 



Plants producing flowers which consist essentially of stamens and pistils, 

 the latter bearing ovules or seeds. 



In distinction from the Flowering Plants are the Flowerless or Cryptogamous Plants, 

 comprising the rest of the vegetable kingdom, from the very simply organized Slime Moulds 

 and Bacteria up to the highly organized Ferns and Club-Mosses. But in the study of 

 timbers this group is unimportant, as only in a few rare cases do any of its representatives 

 attain the dimensions of trees. Those exceptions are the Tree-Ferns of tropical countries 

 gigantic ferns, which sometimes attain the height of fifty or sixty feet, with straight 

 shafts quite like tree trunks and tops consisting of a bunch of enormous plume-like fronds. 

 They, however, are of practically no value as timber. 



EXOGENOUS OR DICOTYLEDONOUS PLANTS. 



Fowering plants whose stems consist of a central column of pith sur- 

 rounded by wood in concentric layers, and this in turn by bark; the stem* 

 increasing in thickness by the addition of a new layer each year to tho 

 wood externally and to the bark internally. Leaves mostly netted-vein. 

 First leaves of the embryo (cotyledons) two and opposite, or (in the 



