NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
adds another and distinctive note of interest 
to the grain of the finished wood. 
In order to secure the opinion of practical 
men upon the new wood, samples were sub- 
mitted to wood - workers, furniture finishers, 
carvers, painters, and merchant lumbermen. 
It was particularly interesting to note the ex- 
pression upon the faces of these matter-of-fact 
men as they saw, the first of all industrialists 
to look upon it, this new factor in the manu- 
facturing forces of the world. After the initial 
exclamation of wonderment, out would come 
a pocket rule, to measure the annular growth, 
each man seeming to doubt his own eyes. 
Then a sharp knife would be whipped out to 
test the wood for hardness; or, if it were a 
painter or finisher at work, brushes were at 
once dropped and a close and critical exam- 
ination and test of the grain of the wood 
followed, volleys of questions being fired 
meanwhile. 
Welding together many opinions expressed 
by these practical men, these statements may 
be taken as the consensus: 
The production of a hard wood of the 
character of this at such a phenomenal rate of 
54 
