The Commercial Classification of Colony Timbers, 67 
put to the uses to which those timbers are usually applied. Thus English, 
Spanish and American Oak are of Quercus species, but the African oaks are 
Lophira and Oldfieldiana spp., one a Dipterocarp, the other a Euphorbia, 
botanically wide as the poles asunder from each other and from the Cupuli- 
ferous oaks of the temperate regions of the North. The West Indian Satin- 
wood is a relative of the Orange while the East Indian is a cousin of our 
Crabwood. The Rosewoods may be either Thespesia Dalbergia or Pterocarpus 
spp. according to the port of origin, and Walnut may belong to any one of 
three or four different botanical orders. 
It will thus be seen that, after the sound knowledge cf local names bas been 
acquired, before the local me1chant can ariange bis timbers for sale, he wants 
an equally intimate acquaintance with the timbers in use in the United King- 
dom, the States, Germany and France at least. He should know the diffe.ent 
mahoganies in use and be able to guess at the value of a log from the run of 
the grain or mottle, for while plain wood is selling at 5to7 cents per foot, “fiddle 
mottle ” or peacock mottle ” may fetch anything from 24 cents to a dollar, 
and a rich stop mottle at times sells at $2.40 per foot superficial. He should 
be able to judge of the fitness of an oak log for quartering for furniture uses, 
splitting for staves, or sawing for waggon planks. A knowledge of the many 
peculiarities of Birch wood, perhaps the most difficult of timbers to handle 
successfully, would be full cf suggestion. The necessity after felling of quickly 
chipping the bark, removing the log and exposing under cover to free action 
of the air, the danger, afte: a long confinement in the hold of a ship, of finding 
your cargo doated and disc lovied by fungus, or of decay due to close piling 
in the yard, o1 of shakes from too rapid drying, all this would be an education 
badly wanted by the timber men of this colony in the tender and loving treat- 
ment of forest products, and suggestive of ways in which local woods, at 
present considered valueless, might be turned to some useful purpose. 
The secrets of seasoning Boxwood should also be a lberal education, as 
everybody knows this timber is used for turnery and engraving, and it 1s 
liable to split in seasoning. To avoid this, it is generally seasoned for four or 
five years in a dark cellar. The sap wood is then stripped with a hatchet 
and the hard wood blocks stored in the cellar till they are wanted. Its further 
preparation for turnery includes soaking in clean water, boiling, wiping dry 
and burying in sand or bran till put on the lathe. The supplies of this wood 
from Europe and the Black Sea are rapidly running short, and a good deal 
of the Boxwood now in use comes from the East, some from the States and 
some from East Africa. These latter timbers are botanically far away from 
the Buxus genus, and are not Euphorbias at all. A hint of the value of the 
roots of trees may be got from the fact that the root of the European box tree 
is used for turnery, the trunk generally furnishes the engraver’s blocks. 
The history of American Satin Walnut is also of interest, as an example 
of difficulties of a different sort successfully overcome. When first put on 
the home markets this wood got a very bad reputation for warping. It would 
twist and curl, after sawing, into drain pipe bends until there was not much 
exaggeration in the story of the joiner, who tld a merchant that he had been 
