HARDWOOD OR BROAD-LEAF SECTION OF TREES 45 
and bends are required, as for boat-knees and other 
purposes. The finest timber is developed when the trees 
are coppice-grown—straight, long, and clear trunks 
being the most advantageous form for general use. 
Unrivalled as are its qualities for durability and 
strength, and indispensable as it was in times past, it 
has not, during the last century, been so necessary 
to consumers owing to importations from other coun- 
tries. These have partly taken its place, some for 
their better working qualities, others for their superior 
dimensions, but for durability and strength the British 
grown wood has not been equalled, either when wholly 
submerged in water or subjected to the alternations of 
wet and dry. Its use of late years has been principally 
confined to boat or barge-building, wheelwrights’ use 
and, in a much less degree than formerly, for railway- 
wagon work. It is rarely used at the present day by 
the cabinet-maker, Russian, Austrian and American 
varieties, owing to their better working qualities, 
having quite superseded this native material. 
What is known as brown oak is, however, a choice 
wood for the cabinet trade. The cause of this colour- 
ation is usually ascribed to the incipient decay of the 
trees, and the greater the age of such timber the richer 
the colour; there are, however, differences of opinion as 
to the cause of this production. The brown colour 
is frequently found in young, straight-grown, maiden 
trees. In many cases trees get pollarded, and in course 
of years develop burrs and excrescences from which the 
finest wood is generally obtained. These brown oak 
trees are not common, and owing to their value are much 
sought after. One instance, however, where the wood 
had evidently not been valued, came under the writer’s 
notice some years ago: a good portion of a fair-sized 
park on the borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire, 
