MINOR SPECIES 



A considerable number of trees grow in this country which, taken 

 singly, are of small importance, but in the aggregate they fill a place 

 which would be difficult to fill without them. Most of them are local, 

 and are seldom heard of outside of the regions where they grow. Some 

 are small, and for that reason are not demanded by the ordinary user 

 of lumber; but small size is not necessarily a bar to the use of a wood. 

 Many places may be filled by pieces too small for the sawmill. Some- 

 times a diminutive trunk contains material of extraordinary hardness, 

 or it may be polished to a rare smoothness, or the colors may be ex- 

 quisite. Numerous commodities can be successfully manufactured 

 from blocks or billets which are only a few inches in diameter and a foot 

 or two in length. This is particularly true of some of the rare hard- 

 woods of Florida and southern Texas where tropical species have ex- 

 tended their ranges northward over the borders of the United States. 

 Some of the small trees in that group are known by name in only the 

 immediate locality where they grow, and their qualities are scarcely 

 appreciated even there. In some instances railroad ties are hewed 

 from wood which is fit for the finest furniture. 



It is no uncommon thing for Mexicans along the Rio Grande to 

 warm their huts and cook their meals with fuel chopped from trunks 

 of Texas ebony, algarita, cat's claw, bluewood, huisache, retama, and 

 junco. Those who have traveled among the Indian rancherias of New 

 Mexico and Utah have grown familiar with the peculiar odor filling the 

 air in the vicinity of camp fires. It is the smoke of the rare junipers 

 which the Indians burn for fuel ; and yet it is wood of such soft tones and 

 exquisite blending of colors that the shades of a Persian rug suffer by 

 comparison. Among the ten thousand islands which fringe the coasts 

 of south Florida, and also among the hummocks of the mainland, are 

 rare trees whose wood is unsurpassed in hardness, fineness of texture, 

 and beauty. These are not being used at all, or only as fuel to feed some 

 fisherman's or camper's fire, or to make a smoke to drive away mosquit- 

 oes. The time will come when small and scarce woods will be sought, if 

 they are valuable for any special purpose. In preceding pages of this 

 book many minor species have been listed and briefly described in 

 connection with those more important, and with which they are closely 

 related. There are more than a hundred others which were necessarily 

 omitted from former pages. A few of these deserve at least a brief 

 mention, and are listed in the following paragraphs. 



KCEBERLINIA (Kceberlinia spinosa) is commonly considered a 



897 



