AMERICAN FOREST TREES 609 



One of the earliest uses of sycamore was by farmers who cut hollow 

 trunks, sawed them in lengths of three or four feet, nailed bottoms in 

 them, and used them for barrels for grain. They were called gums. 

 Solid logs two or three feet in diameter were cut in lengths of a foot or 

 less, bored through the center, and used as wheels for ox carts. The ox 

 yoke was often made of sycamore. Butchers used sycamore sections 

 about three feet high for meat blocks. The wood is tough, and continual 

 hacking fails to split it. The use for meat blocks continues at the present 

 time. In Illinois 1,600,000 feet were so employed in 1910. 



One of the earliest employments of the wood for commercial pur- 

 poses was in the manufacture of boxes for plug tobacco; but it has 

 now been largely replaced by cheaper woods. Its freedom from stain 

 and odor is its chief recommendation for tobacco boxes. Some of it is in 

 demand for cigar boxes. 



The modern uses of sycamore are many. It is made into ordinary 

 crates and shipping boxes in most regions where it grows. Rotary cut 

 veneer is worked into berry crates and baskets, and into barrels. Ice 

 boxes and refrigerators are among the products. Slack coopers are 

 among the largest users, but some of the manufactured stave articles 

 belong more properly to woodenware, such as tubs, washing machines, 

 candy buckets, and lard pails. 



Furniture makers demand the best grades, and most of the quarter- 

 sawed stock goes to them, though the manufacturers of musical instru- 

 ments buy some of the finest. Use is pretty general from pipe organs 

 and pianos down to mandolins, guitars and phonographs. It enters 

 extensively into the making of miscellaneous commodities. As small 

 a toy as the stereoscope consumes much sycamore. Makers of trunks 

 find it suitable for slats, and it serves as small squares and borders in 

 parquetry. It is a choice wood for barber poles and saddle trees, and its 

 fine appearance when worked in broad panels leads to its employment 

 as interior finish for houses, boats, and passenger cars. 



CALIFORNIA SYCAMORE (Plalanus racemosa) is one of the three species of syca- 

 more now found growing naturally in the United States. They are survivors of a 

 very old family and appear to have been crowded down from the far North by the 

 cold, or to have made their way south for some other reason. Sycamores flourished 

 in Greenland in the Cretaceous age, some millions of years ago, as is shown by fossil 

 remains dug up in that land of ice and eternal winter. They grew in central Europe, 

 about the same time, but long ago disappeared from there. Sycamores were 

 growing in the United States an immense period of time ago, and were doubtless 

 lifting their giant white branches high above the banks of ancient rivers while the 

 gorgeous bloom of yellow poplars brightened the forests on the rich bottom lands 

 farther back. Several species of sycamores which grew in the United States during 

 the Tertiary age are now extinct. All seem to have been much like those which 

 have come down to the present day. 



