388 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



It is in Italy where the chestnut is cultivated so extensively and so highly prized 

 and utilized. Bread of chestnut flour is often the mainstay of the people. It is 

 cooked as a vegetable with Brussels-sprouts. It is also candied and sold as a confec- 

 tion. The coppice furnishes fine vine stakes. The bark yields tannin. There are 

 chestnut trees on the slopes of Mt. ./Etna which bore fruit when Homer was a boy. 

 No. 6 is a twig of the European chestnut showing some young fruits. It is not 

 essentially different from our own chestnut, but the photograph is worthy of 

 reproduction. 



It is in southern countries where charcoal is most extensively used. It emits 

 little smoke or other odors that would taint food. It can be used in pots and 

 braziers without chimneys or stoves. It can be manufactured from the small wood 

 of the forest. All through Southern Europe the smoke of charcoal burners may be 

 seen in the hills, Nos. 7 and 9 show charcoal burners in France. The wood is 

 mostly poplar. It is cut and sorted so that there is little waste. Most of the chop- 

 ping is done with a cleaver, shown in the man's hand in No. 7. As I have already 

 said, European implements are crude. 



No. 10 shows the kind of saw used on heavy beech logs. It is not unlike our 

 common buck-saw, and is decidedly inferior to our common wood saws. In the con- 

 version of timber the cheapness of the labor is more than offset by the crudity of 

 their implements. 



No. 1 1 shows an European axe. The tree is being cut close to the ground ; the 

 wood is carefully cut and sorted ; even the brushwood is bundled, but the axe, as far 

 as shape is concerned, belongs to the Bronze age, when the natives of Europe dressed 

 in skins and ate uncooked meat. We can excuse the handle, because they have no 

 hickory, but the blade is inexcusable in this day of labor-saving devices and com- 

 fortable tools. 



No. 13 shows two peasants sawing boards by hand in France, not far from the 

 city of Paris. This method is practiced in all countries where sawmills are scarce. 

 How much labor would be saved with an American portable or vest pocket sawmill! 

 This is the way their fathers did it. This same method is practiced in the Philippine 

 Islands. 



In France a farmer sticks cuttings of poplars in the ground along the banks of a 

 stream and in the pastures. The side branches are lopped from time to time for 

 fuel, and when the main trunk is large enough it is sawed by hand into boards. The 

 boards are not large, and are carefully piled in the shape of a house, with a project- 

 ing roof to protect them from the weather. 



Machines have developed to a wonderful degree in this country. Europeans all 



