AMERICAN FOREST TREES 681 



Not only is it used for rotary-cut veneer, but it is made into cores 

 or backing on which veneers of costly woods are glued in the manu- 

 facture of furniture, interior finish and fixtures for banks, stores and 

 offices. It serves in the same way in casket making, and is demanded in 

 millions of feet. 



It is employed in amounts larger than any other wood by excelsior 

 mills in the northern Pacific coast region. It is the only wood demanded 

 by that industry in Washington and 6,400,000 feet were cut into that 

 product in 1910. 



Slack coopers find it as valuable in their business in the far West 

 as the common cotton wood is in the East, and hundreds of thousands 

 of staves are made yearly. It is in demand for the manufacture of 

 flour barrels and those intended for other food products. 



Trunk makers use it in three-ply veneers for the bodies, trays, 

 boxes and compartments of trunks and for suit cases. Though soft 

 and light, it is very tough, and sheets of veneer with the grains placed 

 transversely resist strains much better than solid wood of the same 

 thickness. 



Vehicle makers employ black cottonwood for the tops and shelves 

 of business wagons. Another of its uses is as bottoms of drawers for 

 bureaus, wardrobes, and chiffoniers, and as partitions in desk compart- 

 ments. A full line of kitchen and pantry furniture is made wholly 

 or in part of this wood in the regions where it is cheap and abundant. 



The cottonwoods belong to a very ancient race of broadleaf trees, 

 and like several others, they seem to have had their origin, or at least a 

 very early home, in the far North, where intense cold now excludes 

 almost every form of vegetable growth except the lowest orders. The 

 Cretaceous age saw cottonwoods growing in Greenland. The cotton 

 which then, as now, carried the seeds and planted them fell on more 

 hospitable shores then than can now be found in the far frozen North. 

 The genus was not confined to the arctic and subarctic regions, how- 

 ever, for there were cottonwoods at that time, or later, in more southern 

 latitudes. There were many species in the central portion of this 

 country, and also in Europe, long before the ice age destroyed all the 

 forests north of the Ohio and the Missouri rivers. Some of the old 

 species long ago ceased to exist, but others appear to have come down to 

 the present time without great change. 



The cottonwood shows wonderful vitality, which is doubtless a sur- 

 vival of the characteristic which enabled it to come down from former 

 geologic epochs to the present time. A damaged and mutilated tree 

 will recover. A broken limb, thrust in the ground, will grow. 



BLACK POPLAR (Populus nigra) is quite distinct from black cottonwood, though 



