THE TIMBERS OF COMMERCE 



feel sure, have been taken from an abnormally heavy piece of 

 wood. Hardness Grade 4, compare Maple. Smell or taste 

 none. Burns well and quietly with a lively flame : embers 

 glow in still air. Solution faint brown slightly deepened by 

 potash : ppt. brownish. 



Bark. Brownish, about \ to -fa inch thick, one layer, level- 

 ling up the intervals between the lobed exterior of the log, i.e. 

 thinner and thicker alternately : hard, woody, smooth exter- 

 nally : contains a few hard, white bodies." Dull grey, greenish " 

 (106). " Ashen grey, supple " (69). Plate XIX. Fig. 166. 



Grain. Fine, dense and compact though open. 



Surface. Bright. 



Uses, etc. " Cogs, skittles, plumbers' dressers and mallets . . . 

 tough and stringy." (48). " Difficult to split, strong and tough, 

 not very durable " (131). " Stands exposure without being 

 affected by it, . . . when subjected to a vertical pressure, can- 

 not be destroyed : its fibres instead of breaking short double up 

 like threads " (60). " Indispensable to the turner and cannot 

 be replaced by any other wood for many purposes — screws, 

 etc." (68). 



Authorities. Holtzapffel (48), p. 87. Wiesner (131), p. 889. 

 Nordlinger (87), p. 514. Ditto (86), vol. iii. p. 66. Laslett (60), 

 p. 160. Schwartz (106), p. 479. Martin (68), p. 229. Mathieu 

 (69), p. 396. Mouillefert (79), p. 139. 



Colour. Greyish-white. A sap-wood tree. 



Anatomical Characters. Transverse section : — 



Pores. Need lens, size 4 : uniform : scattered : few 40-75 

 per sq. mm., in groups of 1-16. " Sometimes branched " (87), 

 more usually in short, subdivided, radial groups. 



Rays. Clear : two sizes, the larger size 1-2, seldom less than 

 o - 5 mm. apart, and gracefully curved : compound, i.e. made up 

 of the smaller rays in a continuous mass : " the broad rays are 

 absent in the branches " (87) : the smaller rays need lens, size 

 5-6 and 6-9 per mm. : rather more than a pore- width apart : 

 both lighter in colour and denser than the ground-tissue. 



Rings. Visible but not prominent : of lobed or undulating 

 (crenate) contour : boundary a more prominent line of denser 

 wood here and there and much clearer with the unaided eye than 

 with the microscope. 



Soft-tissue. Abundant in numerous, fine, undulating lines, 

 following the contour of the rings as in the Oak : narrower than 

 the small rays and slung between the larger like the rungs of a 

 rope-ladder. No wood parenchyma according to Nordlinger 



(87)- 

 Pith. Five-lobed, about 1 mm. diam. 



Radial Section. Pores, just visible, minute colourless scratches. 



220 



