50 TIMBER 
work, for joiners’ requirements, and for sills, floor- 
boards, and other builders’ uses: the cabinet-makers 
are also free consumers, generally using the cheapest 
grades for the manufacture of the poorer classes of 
furniture. 
As a rule, the boards and planks are fairly well 
sawn, and the manufacturers excel in their methods of 
‘extracting what is known as quartered and plain wood 
from the logs. To explain these terms it must be under- 
stood thet all the silver grain or figure of oak lies on what 
Botanists call the medullary rays. These are rays 
emanating from the heart or centre of the log and 
diverging to the outside. They are to be observed in 
every tree, noticeably strong in the oak, beech, and 
other trees, but more or less indistinct in others. In 
sawing an oak tree, all boards or planks so cut that 
their face falls on these convergent rays, are figured, 
those sawn contra to these rays being devoid of figure 
on the face but having it on their edges. 
African Oak.—Formerly large shipments of this 
wood were made from Sierra Leone to Great Britain. 
The wood was held in high esteem by the naval author- 
ities, but was probably superseded by the gradual 
introduction of Teak. It is a hard, dense, weighty 
wood, brown in colour, and notable for its strength 
and durability, and is rated second-class in Lloyd’s 
list of shipbuilding timbers. So far as is known there 
has been no shipment to the London market for many 
years past. 
' Japanese Oak.—With this wood, the latest descrip- 
tion introduced to the markets of the United Kingdom, 
the remarks on the various varieties of oak commonly 
in use in England will be concluded. The Japanese, 
it is well understood, have been conservators of their 
well-wooded lands for innumerable years, and at the 
