AMERICAN FOREST TREES 327 



of uses extends from the most common articles, such as boxes and crates, 

 to those of highest class, like furniture and interior finish. It is only 

 moderately strong and stiff, and is not a competitor of hickory, ash, 

 maple, and oak in vehicle manufacturing and other lines where strength 

 or elasticity is demanded ; but in nearly all other classes of wood uses, 

 red gum has made itself a place. It has pushed to the front in spite of 

 prejudice. As soon as the difficulties of seasoning were mastered, its 

 victory was won. Its annual use in Michigan, the home and center of 

 hardwood supply, exceeds 20,000,000 feet in manufactured articles, ex- 

 clusive of what is employed in rough form. In Illinois, the most 

 extensive wood-manufacturing state in the Union, red gum stands 

 second in amount among the hardwoods, the only one above it being 

 white oak. In Kentucky, only white oak and hickory are more im- 

 portant among the factory woods, while in Arkansas, where the annual 

 amount of this wood in factories exceeds 100,000,000 feet, it heads the 

 list of hardwoods. 



As a veneer material, it is demanded in four times the quantity of 

 any other species. The veneer is nearly all rotary cut, and it goes into 

 cheap and expensive commodities, from berry crates to pianos. 



The wood weighs 36.83 pounds per cubic foot. It is straight- 

 grained, the medullary rays are numerous but not prominent, the pores 

 diffuse but small, and the summerwood forms only a narrow band, like 

 a line. The annual rings do not produce much figure, but wood has 

 another kind of figure, the kind that characterizes English and Cir- 

 cassian walnuts, smoky, cloudy, shaded series of rings, independent of 

 the growth rings. They have no definite width or constant color, but 

 the color is usually deeper than the body of the wood. This figure is 

 one of the most prized properties of red gum. It is that which makes 

 the wood the closest known imitator of Circassian walnut. 



All red gum is not figured, and that which is figured may be worked 

 in a way to conceal or make little use of the figure. It shows best in 

 rotary cut veneer and tangentially sawed lumber. Various woods are 

 imitated with red gum. It is stained or painted to look like oak, cherry, 

 mahogany, and even maple. 



Some trees have thin sapwood, and others are all sapwood. This 

 peculiarity sometimes leads to misunderstandings in lumber transactions. 

 A buyer specifies red gum, expecting to get red heartwood, but the seller 

 delivers lumber cut from the red gum tree, though light colored sapwood 

 may predominate. Properly speaking, the name is applied to the tree 

 as a whole and does not refer to any particular color of wood in the tree. 

 The term "red" is said to have referred originally to the color of autumn 

 leaves, and not to the wood. 



