KAURI PINE 



" pleasant and agreeable when worked " (60). Taste rather bit- 

 ter. Burns very well, with a long, quiet, smoky flame and a 

 strong, agreeable, cedar-like aroma : embers glow in still air : 

 ash blackish. Solution with alcohol faint brown : with water 

 colourless. 



Grain. Extremely fine, even, and smooth. Surface lustrous, 

 satiny : the ground-tissue glossy, but the rays dull. 



Bark. Smooth, not fissured : 1-1J inch thick : woody : one 

 layer : red, and covered with papillse. 



Uses, etc. " Generally sound, polishes well, free from knots, 

 wears evenly, shrinks very little, much more durable than any 

 other Pine . . . yacht-decks . . . one of the best woods a car- 

 penter can take in hand . . . generally free from defects " (60). 

 Laslett gives much valuable information. " Of great size, . . . 

 160 ft. high by 15 or even 24 ft. diameter " (91). " Stronger 

 and more durable than the best Red Deal, . . . tougher and 

 more elastic than the American Spruce, while it is more easily 

 worked than the Red-wood of California " (59). This last is 

 perhaps a little overdrawn. There is striking similarity in the 

 appearance of this wood to that of Liquidambar styraciflua (No. 

 97). If not too costly Kauri should make good paving blocks. 

 " Many of the wooden houses of Auckland erected half a cen- 

 tury ago are still standing, the timber showing no signs of 

 decay " (59). 



Authorities. Holtzapffel (48), p. 100. Laslett (60), p. 388. 

 Ditto (61), p. 433. Stevenson (113), p. 211. Kew Cat. Conif. 

 (58), p. 59. Smith (111), p. 148. Bailey (15), p. 135. Perceval 

 (91), p. 24. Kirk (59). 



Colour. Whitish-brown, brownish or reddish-brown. " Pale 

 straw " (61). " Yellowish white or straw " (113). Sharply de- 

 fined from the sap-wood, which is about from 3-5 inches wide or 

 " more on poorly grown trees " (61). 



Anatomical Characters. Transverse section : — 



Pores or resin-canals absent. 



Rays. Just visible upon a clean cut section, but seem more 

 prominent when the wood is left rough from the saw, when they 

 may be mistaken for the ring-boundaries. Size 5 : red : contrast 

 well with and are denser than the ground- tissue : tough, and can 

 be separated like threads from a very thin section : taper rapidly : 

 many, but very irregular, about 1-8 per mm. 



Rings. Clear at times, but not in all specimens : boundary a 

 line of slight contrast : no smoky zones. 



Ground-tissue. Cells in radial rows, irregular in size one row 

 with another, but the cells in each row diminish a little in size 

 from within outwards. 



Pith. ? 



263 



