80 IMPORTANT TIMBER TREES 



Fortunately, however, what constitutes a softwood tree 

 has been defined by a recent decision of the courts which 

 holds that " any tree that has a needle-like leaf is a soft- 

 wood " ; and under this distinction it will be fair to assume 

 that all others are hardwoods. It is not claimed that this 

 decision is based upon actual character of the wood, but 

 upon a prevailing classification, by lumbermen, which is of 

 so long standing that it amounts to a universal custom of 

 which the law will take cognizance. It should be under- 

 stood, however, that when the author speaks of the wood 

 of any given tree as " soft " or " hard," he refers to the 

 actual properties and not to the classification designated by 

 the judicial decision ; as, for instance, he calls the wood of 

 Sugar Maple hard and that of Basswood soft, while both 

 belong to the class of legal hardwoods. So, too, the wood 

 of the Longleaf Pine is spoken of as hard, that is, hard 

 for a pine, while it is legally placed with the softwoods, 

 and this rule pertains to all species of trees considered. 



Fine-grained Close-grained Coarse-grained 

 Cross-grained Straight-grained. All these terms are 

 more or less used by lumbermen, woodworkers, and authors 

 denoting certain characteristics of wood. In order to under- 

 stand their meaning, it will be well first to determine what 

 constitutes the " grain." Unfortunately the dictionaries are 

 not very explicit in definition nor are they in complete ac- 

 cord with woodworkers and lumbermen respecting its mean- 

 ing when applied to wood. The nearest approach to an 

 agreement is the definition of "grain" given in the Century 

 Dictionary \ where it is defined as " fibrous texture or con- 

 stitution, especially of wood ; the substance of wood as modi- 

 fied by the quality, arrangement, or direction of its fibres : 

 as, boxwood has a very compact grain ; wood of a gnarled 

 grain ; to plane wood with, against, or across the grain." The 

 same authority defines fibre as "the narrow elongated cells 

 which characterize the woody and bast tissues of plants, 

 giving them strength, toughness, and elasticity." While 

 giving due importance to the direction and arrangement 



