STUDIES OF SEED-PLANTS 185 



now in the market. For some purposes wood softer than oak 

 is desirable because easy to work carpenters charge much 

 more for working oak than for soft woods like white pine. 

 Hence pine, hemlock, spruce, redwood, basswood, tulip-wood 

 or whitewood, cedar, sweet gum, and poplar are used for 

 numerous purposes where soft and light wood will serve. 

 For high-grade furniture, woods with beautiful grain and 

 color combined with hardness are desired; and hence the 

 popularity of mahogany, black walnut, rosewood, ebony, and 

 oak. 



It often happens that in a given locality a wood is used 

 for a purpose because it is the cheapest available, but not the 

 best. For example, hemlock is largely used in Eastern states 

 for frames of buildings ; but its softness and tendency to split 

 makes it far inferior to spruce among soft woods and not to 

 be compared with the oak, formerly much used for this pur- 

 pose. White pine and spruce are often used for cheap floors, 

 but are as much inferior to yellow pine as this is to hard 

 maple and oak for this purpose. Such semi-hard woods as 

 elm, chestnut, birch, and basswood are now abundant in 

 cheap furniture, and are often stained to imitate harder 

 woods like oak and mahogany. 



Woods like chestnut and red oak, with large wood-ducts, 

 making the annual rings very conspicuous, are said to be 

 " open-grained." In finishing such woods for furniture it 

 is first necessary to use wood-fillers, which are pastes for 

 filling the open spaces left after planing, and thus give a 

 perfectly level surface to receive the varnish. Examine 

 polished oak furniture and compare with an oak board which 

 has been planed but not filled. 



A wood which may be split into straight pieces parallel 

 to the central axis of the stem is said to be " straight grained." 

 Ash, chestnut, and hemlock are commonly so ; but irregularity 

 in thickness of annual rings and in position of the medullary 

 rays, vascular bundles and knots makes some woods more or 



