AMERICAN FOREST TREES 345 



makers. Doubtless the largest use from 1865 to 1885 was for furniture. 



Much of the best black walnut is exported. The logs are flattened 

 on the four sides to make them fit better in ships and cars, and also to be 

 rid of most of the sapwood which is valueless. The ends are painted 

 with red lead or some other substance to lessen liability to check. 

 Sometimes export walnut is sawed in thick planks. 



Large quantities of old-time walnut furniture have been resurrected 

 in recent years from granary and garret where it was stored long ago to 

 have it out of the way. Some of the old beds, lounges, cupboards, and 

 chairs were of heavy, solid walnut, the kind not made now. Some of it 

 has been furbished, re-upholstered, and set among the heirlooms; other 

 pieces have been sold to furniture makers who saw the solid wood in 

 veneers, and use it again. 



The search for old walnut did not stop with dragging antique furni- 

 ture from cubbyholes and attics, but two-inch lumber has been pulled 

 from floors of old barns, and mills. Many old fence rails were made into 

 gun stocks during the Civil war. Later, walnut stumps were pulled from 

 field and wayside, and went to veneer mills. Some finely figured wood 

 comes from stumps where roots and trunk join. 



An occasional walnut tree develops a large burl which is valued for 

 its figured wood. Sometimes the burl is the form of a door knob, with the 

 tree trunk growing through the center. The burl sometimes has a 

 diameter three or four times as great as the trunk. The origin of such 

 burls is supposed to be a mass of buds which fail to break through the 

 bark. 



Black walnut has a compound leaf from one to two feet long, with 

 from fifteen to twenty-three leaflets, each about three inches long and an 

 inch or two wide. The nuts ripen in the fall, and are valuable. They 

 are borne chiefly by trees growing in open ground; forest trees do not 

 bear until old, and then only a few nuts. The walnuts which germinate 

 are usually those buried by squirrels, and forgotten. 



Within the past twenty or thirty years plantations have been made 

 in states of the Middle West. Many young planted trees have been cut 

 for fence posts, with disappointing results. It was known that old 

 walnut is durable, and it was supposed young trunks would be, when 

 used for posts; but young trees are nearly all sapwood which rots 

 quickly. 



Forest grown walnut trees vary in size from a diameter of two feet 

 and a height of fifty, to a diameter of six or more and a height of 100 or 

 120. Trunks which grow in the shade are tall, clear, and symmetrical; 

 those in the open are shorter, with more taper. 



PALE-LEAF HICKORY (Hicoria, villosa) is a small tree but large enough to be 



