174 THE USES OF PLANTS. 



creased demand, especially for the soft woods of the 

 Baltic and of Canada. The increase of mining has 

 caused the home supply of pit-props to fall far short 

 of the demand ; whilst whole tracts of forest in 

 Sweden are now annually cleared by the require- 

 ments of the wooden match-manufacture alone. 



Recklessness in the past had in 1875 reduced the 

 valuable forests of Box-wood in Mingrelia to the 

 verge of extinction, and the costliness of the wood 

 has caused, in spite of the competition of other 

 methods of engraving, an anxious search for some 

 efficient substitute. Dividing woods into those re- 

 quired for this purpose, those used for walking-sticks, 

 etc., those used for ornamental purposes, veneering 

 and furniture, and those mainly employed as timber 

 in works of construction, we may first transcribe the 

 list of about 25 proposed substitutes for Box, given 

 in a valuable paper contributed to the * Journal of the 

 Society of Arts/ in 1886, by Mr. John R. Jackson, the 

 able Curator of the Kew Museums. 



PITTOSPORE^E. 



Pittosporum imdulatum, Vent., Australia, where it 

 is know as ' Box.' Introduced experimentally in 1862, 

 but inferior. 



P. bicolor, Hook., New South Wales and Tasmania : 

 superior to the former. 



Bursaria spinosa, Cav. : equal to inferior Box, but 

 Bblunts tools ; the OX-TREE of Tasmania. 



MELIACE.E. 



Swietenia mahagoni, L. : only suited for coarse 

 work. 



