430 . [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



the better the wood, when used as timber, for its absence, or 

 the, presence of only a little, is a sign that the wood was cut 

 from a young tree. 



The oak wood was then compared with that of the pine 

 wood, and it was pointed out that there were a great number 

 of woods like the pine, and differing from the oak, in not having 

 true pores (vessels), but elements known to botanists as 

 tracheides. Timber trees are sometimes roughly classified into 

 broad-leaved trees and narrow-leaved trees, or conifers, an 

 example of the former is the oak, and the latter Scotch pine. 

 The medullary rays were not only important tO' the life of a 

 tree in linking together the living elements of the wood and 

 bast, but when the wood is used as timber a good deal of its 

 figure depended upon whether the wood was cut parallel with 

 the medullary rays. The bast is formed from the cambium, 

 but not to the same extent as wood, still it is also an important 

 part of a tree, for in it the food travels to its destination, and 

 it is protected by a corky coat, the bark. 



The importance of the leaves can be best understood from 

 the fact that if anything destroys or suppresses their function, 

 a poor production in the annual growth of wood results. They 

 are the laboratories manufacturing food, and giving off un- 

 necessary water brought up from the soil. 



At this stage a number of interesting slides, dealing with 

 this part of the paper, were described, and the lecturer then 

 passed on to the second division of his subject — the Identifica- 

 tion of Wood — in which he said there was a wide field for re- 

 search, as the subject was only in its infancy, and the more the 

 subject is studied the more practically important the matter 

 becomes. He was not prepared to under-rate the rule-of-thumb 

 method of knowing a piece of timber through constantly 

 handling it. A carpenter had no need for a text-book to tell a 

 piece of oak wood, any more than a child required a book on 

 botany, to tell a daisy, but the time may come when the user of 

 timber meets with a piece of wood he has never seen before. 

 Here then something more is needed, and Science, with its 

 precise definitions, steps in where common-sense stops short. 



