344 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



The trunk's value increases with age. The dark colored heartwood 

 only is merchantable, and young trees have little heartwood. The 

 thick, white sap constitutes most of the trunk until long after the tree 

 has reached small sawlog size. Then the transformation to the dark, 

 valuable heartwood goes on with fair rapidity, and the outer shell of 

 sapwood becomes thinner as the heart increases, and in time a trunk is 

 produced which is fit for good logs. Value comes only with age. The 

 quarter or half a century which has passed since the country was so 

 diligently ransacked for merchantable walnut, has been sufficient to 

 develop many a tree which was then rejected by the purchasers. Many 

 a tree now a foot in diameter had scarcely sprouted then. In a region of 

 700,000 square miles, walnut trees do not need to grow very close to- 

 gether to produce a yearly cut of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 feet. 



Black walnut is valuable for its color, figure, and the fine polish it 

 takes. It is stronger than white oak, weight for weight, but it is eight 

 pounds lighter per cubic foot. The figure of the wood is due wholly 

 to the annual rings, as its medullary rays are invisible to the naked eye. 

 The wood is very porous, and the pores are diffused in all parts of the 

 annual rings, except in the thin, pencil-like mark representing the out- 

 ward boundary of the summerwood. When sapwood changes to heart- 

 wood, some of the pores disappear, but those which remain are abun- 

 dantly sufficient to absorb any stains or fillers which the wood finisher 

 may wish to apply. 



The annual sawmill cut of black walnut in the United States is 

 from 35,000,000 to 40,000,000 feet, but much goes to foreign countries 

 in the log, and a considerable quantity goes to veneer mills about 

 2,500,000 feet a year and a quantity finds its way to various factories 

 where it is worked up without any statistical record being made of it. 



Black walnut is never used as rough lumber. It all goes to factor- 

 ies of some kind to be converted into finished commodities. It is not 

 possible to say where it all goes, for statistics of manufacture are frag- 

 mentary in this country. It may be of interest to know that demand for 

 walnut by factories in the following states was 11,641,137 feet in 1910: 

 Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, 

 Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The wood served so many pur- 

 poses that a list of them would be monotonous. In Illinois the largest 

 users are the sewing machine and the musical instrument industries; 

 in Michigan the makers of automobiles and of musical instruments; in 

 Kentucky the manufacturers of coffins, furniture, and musical instru- 

 ments; in Massachusetts, the makers of furniture and of firearms. 

 These uses probably afford a fairly accurate index for the whole country. 

 During the Civil war the largest demand for walnut came from gunstock 



