MAHOGANY. 
By Rev. James AIKEN. 
“Spanish Mahogany,’—even about the word itself there is a resonant solidity 
that has in it elements of romance. The sound of the name calls up pictures 
of generous boards and the play of light mingling with warm deep tones 
when the crystal and silver were reflected from the polished surface sugges- 
ting the depths of some dark forest pool in the tropic land in which the timber 
had its home. “ Walnut” and “rosewood” leave us cold and unmoved, 
their associations are frivolous in comparison, speak rather of the salon and 
the drawing-room and lack the suggestions of domesticity which make the 
deepest appeal to the phlegmatic soul of the Briton. It is a household 
word. There may be some who would confess to uncertainty about the difference 
between pitch pine and red, or maple and satinwood, but none so unin- 
structed as to be “no judge of mahogany.” There are woods rarer and more 
beautiful or tougher and more durable, but none so perfectly adapted to a hun- 
dred domestic uses or more gratefully responsive to the loving manipulation of 
the skilled workman’s hand. Even the difficulties of counter running and twisted 
grain, curls and pick up patches are just so many challenges to skill which spur 
it on to the finish with which we know the wood will reward the patient 
craftsman. 
The interest of ‘* Timehri ” in the wood has its source in our possession of an 
indigenous timber of the noble family to which the mahoganies proper belong. 
I suppose that every reader knows that the West Indies is their home. The 
Spaniards on their arrival in these regions found it plentiful and gave to it its 
earliest name of Cedra or Cedrela, and by the name of cedar it was known for 
the best part of a century. The first appearance of the name “ mahogany ™ 
occurs in Ogilvy’s America in 1671, but the name of cedar, misleading as it is 
on account of its confusion of a tropical tree with an Asiatic plant of the coni- 
ferous order, was still applied indifferently to all the West Indian red-woods, soft 
and hard, for many years after. W. Stevenson in “ Trees of Commerce,” quotes 
from “The Mahogany Tree’ Captain Dampier’s reference in 1681 to cedar. 
“We reckon,” says he, “the pereagos and canoes which are built of cedar 
the best of any.” 
In 1724 it was known as a furniture wood in London, and in 1750 Chippendale 
was famous in the production of those perforated, carved back, ball and claw- 
footed chairs which make his name a household word. 
One of the romantic stories of mahogany is the tale of a cabinet-maker who, 
at the end of the eighteenth century, bought at Hullan old ship entirely built 
of mahogany, broke her up with care for the sake of the fine character of the 
wood and, from the sale of the material to the furniture trade, realised a sum so 
handsome as to set him up in a timber importing business which flourished 
throughout the nineteenth century. 
