OTHER BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY. 311 
wood trees twenty feet in diameter, and one measuring twenty- 
eight feet. On the trail from Humboldt Bay to Trinidad, there 
are very large trees, and indeed all along the coast, from Kel 
River to the Klamath, there are numerous trees of mammoth 
size. 
The spruce cut at Humboldt Bay is light and is used for 
packing-boxes. The redwood is used for siding, furniture, 
railroad-sleepers, telegraph-poles, fence-posts, and all kinds of 
house-work, inside and out. The fragrant cedar has an odor 
ruggestive of a mixture of turpentine and ottar of roses, and is 
used for cupboards, clothes-presses, and inside-work of houses. 
Fir is used for fence-boards, studding, rafters, joists, and 
plank, but the grain is too coarse for inside-work of houses. 
Most of the lumber cut in the Sierra Nevada is sugar-pine, a 
clear, good wood, which is the chief material for inside work 
and furniture in the mining districts. 
The principal kinds of split lumber produced in California, 
are fence-posts, rails, pickets, and shingles. ‘The redwood-tree 
splits very freely, smoothly, and straight ; and furnishes nearly 
all the split lumber of the coast. It is a favorite tree for fence- 
posts, telegraph-poles, and railroad-sleepers, because of its 
great durability under ground, lasting three or four times as 
long as any other wood in common use. For split lumber, the 
tree is cut down and divided with a cross-cut saw, in the same 
manner as for saw-logs. The choice of the trees for splitting 
is important, as they differ greatly in the straightness of the 
grain, and the facility of splitting. Those trees which grow 
in places exposed to the wind are often twisted, and the wood 
is full of curls, and will not open without splintering. Where 
the wood twists, indications of the course of the grain will 
usually be found in the course of the seams in the bark. The 
best trees are those with.a straight, perpendicular growth, 
preserving nearly the same thickness one hundred feet up, as 
at the surface of the ground, with no limbs for one hundred 
and fifty feet, with thin, smooth bark, seamed with perpendic- 
ular lines. It is a pleasure to strike an axe into such a tree. 
