AMERICAN FOREST TREES 435 



but less of the stock goes to market. Logs with birdseye wood are 

 generally reduced to veneer by the rotary process. Curly and wavy 

 grains also occur in this maple. The wavy grain was much sought after 

 by the early hunters who equipped their long rifles with stocks. Having 

 found a piece of timber with the desired wavy grain, the hunter pro- 

 ceeded to shave and whittle until the stock was fitted to the barrel, and 

 the gun was complete. Some of the stocks made with no tools but an 

 ax, drawing knife, and a pocket knife, were works of art which are 

 worthy of preservation in museums. 



Occasionally some unknown rural Stradivari made a violin and 

 selected the curly wood of red maple for the neck and sides. A few of 

 these instruments are floating about the country, but an age of fifty or 

 a hundred years has not yet imparted classic value to them, but the wood 

 is unsurpassed in delicacy of grain and figure. 



Sugar may be manufactured from red maple, but in smaller quan- 

 tity than from sugar maple. In the days when every frontier settle- 

 ment did its own manufacturing, inks and dyes were made from the bark 

 of this tree. The tannin boiled from the bark was treated with sulphate 

 of iron, and it became ink; when alum was added it became black dye; 

 when the sulphate of iron was omitted, and alum alone was put in, a 

 cinnamon-colored dye resulted. 



Red maple is one of the most desirable trees for planting in parks 

 and by roadsides. Nurserymen complain that seedlings are more 

 difficult to manage than silver maples; nor do they grow as rapidly, but 

 the trees are worth much more when once established. They have 

 shorter and stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be 

 attacked by disease ; are more handsome in every way ; but they demand 

 damper soil, and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to 

 restrict the artificial planting of this tree. 



MOUNTAIN MAPLE (Acer spicatum) is known also as moose maple, low maple, 

 and water maple. It is a small tree at its best, seldom more than twenty-five feet 

 high and eight inches in diameter, while in most parts of its range it is only a shrub. 

 Its best growth is on mountain slopes of eastern Tennessee and western North Caro- 

 lina. It likes moist, rich hillsides, and does not object to shade. The flowers come 

 late, but within a month or six weeks after the bloom appears, the fruit is full grown, 

 but it remains on the tree till autumn. The tree's bark is smooth and very thin. 

 The absence of stripes distinguishes this tree from striped maple, which has nearly the 

 same range. Mountain maple grows from Maine to Minnesota, southward to Mich- 

 igan, and along the mountains to Georgia. The wood is light, soft, brown tinged with 

 red. The small size of the trunk forbids its conversion into ordinary lumber. The 

 only commercial use reported for it is in Pennsylvania where it is cut along with 

 other hardwoods for destructive distillation. 



FLORIDA MAPLE (Acer floridanwn) is a species according to some, and according 

 to others is a variety of the hard maple. Its range is limited, and the available 





