AMERICAN FOREST TREES 615 



vania, New York, Ohio, and Indiana. The next year the total output 

 fell to 18,237,000 feet, and cherry went down to a place among the 

 "minor species," such as dogwood, alder, locust, and buckeye. The 

 day of its importance in the lumber industry is past. It has become 

 too scarce to attract much attention, but there will always be some 

 cherry in the market, though veteran trunks, three and four feet 

 through and good for four sixteen-foot logs, will be seldom seen in the 

 years to come. 



While good taste ordinarily dictates that cherry be finished in a 

 tone approximating its natural color, it is quite frequent that it masquer- 

 ades as mahogany. A well-known and perfect method of making cherry 

 look like mahogany is to have the wood rubbed with diluted nitric acid, 

 which prepares it for the materials to be subsequently applied; after- 

 wards, to a filtered mixture of an ounce and a half of dragon's blood 

 dissolved in a pint of spirits of wine, is added one-third that quantity of 

 carbonate of soda, the whole constituting a very thin liquid which is 

 applied to the wood with a soft brush. This process is repeated at short 

 intervals until the wood assumes the external appearance of mahogany. 

 While cherry is employed as an imitation of mahogany, it is in its turn 

 imitated also. Sweet birch is finished to look like cherry, and for that 

 reason is sometimes known as cherry birch. 



Cherry weighs 36.28 pounds per cubic foot; it is very porous, but 

 the pores are small and are diffused through all parts of the annual ring. 

 The wood has no figure. Its value is due to color and luster. The 

 medullary rays are numerous but small, and in quarter-sawing they do 

 not show as mirrors, like oak, but as a soft luster covering the whole 

 surface. 



The principal uses of cherry have always been in furniture and 

 finish, but it has many minor uses, such as tool handles, boxes for garden 

 seeds, spirit levels and other tools, and implements, patterns, penholders, 

 actions for organs and piano players, baseblocks for electrotypes and 

 other printing plates, and cores for high-class panels. Aside from its 

 color, its chief value is due to its comparative freedom from checking 

 and warping. This cherry is one of the few trees that cross the equator. 

 It extends from Canada far down the west coast of South America. 



CHOKE CHERRY (Prunus virginiand) is widely distributed in North America 

 from Canada to Mexico. It is said to attain its largest size in the Southwest where 

 trees are sometimes forty feet high and a foot in diameter. The name is due to the 

 astringency of the half ripe fruit which can scarcely be eaten. When fully ripe it is a 

 little more tolerable, and is then black, but is red before it is ripe. The color of 

 immature cherries deceives the unsophisticated into believing they are ripe. In 

 Canada the fruit is made into pies and jelly, and it is said the tree is occasionally 

 planted for its fruit. The Indians of former times made food of it. The tree is 



