Mahogany. 27 
Nor are the stories of great fortunes made out of single logs of this timber 
without foundation. In 1860 a log of San Domingo wood was sold by Messrs. 
Chaloner & Co., at Liverpool, at over 28 shillings per superficial foot of one inch, 
that is about S74 per cub. foot. Messrs. Mtaraarils & Jardine in 1901 sold a log 
of Cuba mahogany 18ft. 6in. long and 3lin. deep at the butt for £761 10s. 
sterling. In 1903 Messrs. Chaloner & Co. sold three logs cut from one tree of African 
mahogany shipped at Grand Bassam for the colossal sum of £3,: 29 13s. 3d. ster- 
ling, an average rate of $2.16 per ft. superficial, or over $25 per cub. foot. Last 
year at Liverpool another African log was sold for £1,025 sterling, the invoice 
working out at $2.40 per ft. superficial. These great prices are mostly given by 
American buyers for veneering purposes in which ‘ ‘figure ”’ of course is a para- 
mount consideration. Coming to more prosaic levels, the average prices of the 
auctions sales last year ran for Cuban, San Domingo and Benin mahogany about 
10 cents per ft. superficial, the Cuban and San “Domingo logs being mostly 
small stuff about 13 to 16 inches at the butt. African mahoganies other 
than Benin of which large numbers of logs were sold brought about seven 
cents per ft. superficial. “Some of the Benin shipments, it may be remarked, 
were recorded as round logs, and it seems that a good deal of timber from 
various sources is sent to market in that condition. The so-called Indian 
mahogany, Padouk or Andaman Redwood. (Pterocarpus indicus Willd), in reality 
a leguminous tree, when of good colour, seems to average about 4s. to 
4s. Gd. per cub ft. As we shall not have to refer to them again we may 
mention at this point a few other woods known commercially as “ mahog- 
any ~ but belonging to other orders, such asthe Australian mahoganies, Jarrah, 
Water Gum and Forest mahogany, all of them Eucalypti, and Natal mahogany, 
one of the Bixineas. It will thus appear that ‘ mahogany of commerce ’ is 
a large term covering woods of at least four totally separate orders and many 
different species. Indeed, in dealing with some of the African mahoganies, we 
will see that included amongst these also are woods of species unascertained 
which are certainly not mahoganies in the botanical sense. 
It is only within the last year that one could distinguish with certainty the 
timbers that are marketed under this name. Writing in 1905 Mr. Herbert Stone 
says in “‘ Timbers of Commerce :” ‘‘ I know of no convincing proof that any of 
the American kinds met with on the English market are the wood of Swietenia 
mahogani nor that those shipped from Africa are the wood of Khaya senegal- 
ensis.. Two series of specimens with claims to authenticity were then 
known, those at Kew and Nordlingers. On examination of these Mr. Stone 
found that neither the specimens of S. mahogani nor those of K. senegalensis 
in the least resembled the trade specimens he had collected of American and 
African origin. 
The uncertainty was deepened by the inconsistency of all with Gamble’s des- 
cription : ““ Annual rings marked by a continuous line of pores with few or no 
pores in the Autumn wood,” which characteristic, Mr. Stone points out, 1s 
found only in some of the softer cedars such as Mexican. It thus comes about 
that mahogany, the most widely known of timbers, was the least accurately 
known of any. Mr. Stone’s determined efforts have, however, been fruitful and 
we are now in a happier position. In a letter to me dated June 30th, 1910, he 
