656 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



possess miraculous healing powers, and was shipped from Virginia to 

 England in one of the first cargoes to go to that country from the present 

 territory of the United States. Its supposed value did not consist in its 

 use as lumber, but in some medicinal property which it was reputed to 

 possess. People appeared to believe that it would renew the youth of 

 the human race. Some portion of this superstition has clung round 

 sassafras to this day, and it is not entirely confined to ignorant people. 

 Bedsteads made of sassafras were supposed to drive away certain nightly 

 visitors which disturb slumber. In southeastern Arkansas and north- 

 western Mississippi, bedsteads are still made of this wood, with the 

 belief that sleep will be sounder. The same custom doubtless prevails 

 elsewhere. In northern Louisiana floors of sassafras are occasionally 

 laid in negro cabins because of the same superstition, and in the firm 

 belief that it will keep out animals as large as rats and mice. Some of 

 the mountaineers of Kentucky, where each family makes its own soap, 

 insist that the kettle must be stirred with a sassafras stick or it will 

 produce a poor quality of soap. Among the mountains of West Vir- 

 ginia many a farmer equips his henhouse with sassafras poles for roosts, 

 fully convinced that he has put an effective quietus on all tribes, shoals, 

 and kindred of menopon pallidum, and the hens will sleep better. 



The production of sassafras oil is perhaps the largest industry 

 dependent upon this tree. Roots are grubbed by the ton and are sub- 

 jected to destructive distillation. Much of this work is carried on in 

 Virginia where sassafras spreads quickly into abandoned fields, springing 

 up from seeds carried by birds. Veritable thickets soon take possession. 

 Here is where the sassafras oil supply comes from. Contractors often 

 clear the old fields and make them ready for tillage, taking the roots 

 for pay. 



The wood weighs 31.42 pounds per cubic foot; is very durable 

 when exposed to dampness; is slightly aromatic; inclined to check in 

 drying; the layers of annual growth are marked by rings of large pores; 

 summerwood is quite distinct from the earlier growth; medullary rays 

 are many and thin; color dull orange-brown, the thin sapwood light 

 yellow. 



Sassafras goes to sawmills in all regions where it is large enough for 

 lumber, but the total cut is small. Reports from sawmills in 1909 

 credited this species with only 25,000 feet in the United States, and it was 

 still less in 1910. It is evident that this is only a small portion of the 

 total output, and probably Tennessee alone produces that much. The 

 wood is sold with other species and losses its name, frequently passing 

 as ash. The wood bears considerable resemblance to ash, in grain and 

 color, but is lighter in weight, and much lower in strength. 



