TRUE MAHOGANY. 7 



weighing approximately 46 pounds, and 520 board feet a ton. The 

 average mahogany wood from Cuba has a specific gravity of about 

 0.72, and a weight per cubic foot of about 45 pounds, 533 board feet 

 weighing a ton. The lightest mahogany wood is the bay wood, 

 from Mexico, which has a specific gravity of 0.561. A cubic foot 

 weighs only about 35 pounds, and about 686 board feet are required 

 to make a ton. 



The pale-yellow or whitish sap wood of mahogany is thick in 

 young and in rapid-growing trees and thin in old and in slow- 

 growing ones. In Florida the sap is often less than 1 inch in thick- 

 ness on the largest trees, with about 25 annual rings of growth. 

 Compared with this, the sapwood of large trees from Mexico and 

 Honduras is often more than four times as thick and contains less 

 than one-half as many rings of growth. The structural characters 

 of the sapwood and heartwood of mahogany are, of course, similar, 

 but the sapwood is almost never used and is generally removed be- 

 fore the logs are shipped to market. If it is not removed imme- 

 diately after the trees are felled it is apt to become affected by fungi 

 which may also damage the heartwood. 



The color of heartwood ranges from a rich light brown to a 

 dark red-brown, the shade becoming deeper with age and exposure. 

 Florida mahogany is the darkest colored, Cuban and Honduras wood 

 come next, and the baywood grade of Mexican mahogany is the 

 lightest colored. These marked differences in color, as also in 

 density and weight, appear to depend entirely upon the rate of 

 growth, which, in turn, is dependent upon soil and climatic condi- 

 tions. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WOOD FROM DIFFERENT REGIONS. 



When mahogany comes into the market it is graded without refer- 

 ence to whether it is the wood of the small-leafed or large-leafed 

 species. Timber merchants and wood users are interested primarily 

 in the origin of the wood, which affords them a clue as to its quality. 



Mahogany from Florida is the hardest and heaviest of all the West 

 Indian grades. The wood has very narrow annual rings of growth, 

 and the pores are very small, often not more than 0.1 of a millimeter 

 in diameter. The pith rays are broad and quite clearly defined, thus 

 contrasting strongly with Mexican mahogany from the coastal plains, 

 which has pores from two to three times as large, and the pith rays 

 narrower and less numerous. 



Cuban mahogany is hard, heavy, and slightly darker in color than 

 that of British Honduras. The annual rings of growth are very nar- 

 row, especially in trees grown on the higher elevations. The pores, 



