AMERICAN FOREST TREES 93 



Middle Tennessee has produced more red cedar than any other 

 part of the United States, but the bulk of production has been confined 

 to a few counties, which produce a higher class and more aromatic 

 variety of wood than that found elsewhere. A century ago these 

 counties abounded in splendid forests of cedar. The early settlers built 

 their cabins of cedar logs, sills, studding, and rafters; their smoke 

 houses were built of them; their barns; even the roofs were shingled 

 with cedar and the rooms and porches floored with the sweet-scented 

 wood. Not many years ago trees three feet or more in diameter were 

 often found, but the days are past when timber like that can be had 

 anywhere. 



Although the most general use at the present time is for lead 

 pencils, few people who sharpen one and smell the fragrant wood, stop 

 to wonder where it came from. One would smile were it suggested to 

 him that perhaps his pencil was formerly part of some Tennessee farmer's 

 worm fence. The best timber obtained now is hewn into export logs 

 and shipped to Europe, particularly Germany, where a great quantity is 

 converted into pencils. The red wood is made into the higher grades 

 and the sap or streaked wood is used for the cheaper varieties and for pen 

 holders. The smaller and inferior logs are cut into slats, while odds and 

 ends, cutoffs, etc., are collected and sold by the hundred pounds to 

 pencil factories. There are many such factories in the United States 

 now, as well as in Europe, and pencil men are scouring the cedar sections 

 to buy all they can. The farmer who has a red cedar picket or worm 

 fence can sell it to these companies at a round price. Pencil men are 

 even going back over tracts from which the timber was cut twenty-five 

 years ago, buying up the stumps. When the wood was plentiful 

 lumbermen were not frugal, and usually cut down a tree about two feet 

 above the ground, allowing the best part of it to be wasted. 



The German and Austrian pencil makers foresaw a shortage in 

 American red cedar, and many years ago planted large areas to provide 

 for the time of scarcity. The planted timber is now large enough for 

 use, but the wood has been a disappointment. It does not possess the 

 softness and brittleness which give so high value to the forest cedar of 

 this country. As far as can be seen, when present pencil cedar has been 

 exhausted, there will be little more produced of like grade. It grows so 

 slowly that owners will not wait for trees to become old, but sell them 

 while young for posts and poles. 



One of the earliest demands for red cedar was for woodenware 

 made of staves, such as buckets, kegs, keelers, small tubs, and firkins. 

 Material for the manufacture of such wares was among the exports to 

 the West Indies before the Revolutionary war. The ware was no less 



