MOUNTAIN MAHOGANY. 133 



set down in the leaf-forks. Furnishes the hardest, heaviest, 

 and best wood in the United States, if not on the North 

 American Continent, unless we except the Lignum Vita? 

 ((fuiacum), one species in Texas, the other on the Isthmus, 

 which are all that are known to me. The wood is similar in 

 color, dark, almost hlack mahogany, and takes the fine polish 

 of ebony. 



The wood readily sinks in water, as the first cuts of some 

 other trees are wont to do. "As fuel it is worth thirty per 

 per cent, more than hickory, the specific gravity of that 

 being .80S, while this is 1.117; the ash .52 of one per cent., 

 hickory .81 — or three tenths per cent, more." Tables and 

 other furniture have been made of it, but unless properly 

 treated, i. e., by steam, swamp-buried, or mineral spring- 

 bathed, and then slowly seasoned, would be likely to season- 

 crack, etc., as almost any other wood is apt to do when rudely 

 treated. For mauls and mallets, rollers and boxes for the 

 heavy bearings of machinery, it lasts like metal and, although 

 brittle, is much less so than lignum vitae. 



The tiny Birch-leaf Mountain Mahogany (C. parvifolius), 

 of middle and western California, into the coast range of the 

 Pacific, is rarely more than ten inches to a foot in diameter, 

 twenty to thirty odd feet high. As these larger forms usu- 

 ally grow on or near river bars and banks, or creek borders, 

 subject to periodical overflows, they are apt to be grazed and 

 considerably damaged by repeated collisions of flood-wood, 

 on one side; and from centuries of such exposures apt to be 

 decayed. Sometimes these aged trees exhibit also the charred 

 marks of forest fires; but, to a great extent, it abounds along 

 in Summer-dried upland ravines, even on ridges and high 

 mountain tops, where it becomes reduced to an unpretentious 

 shrub. The little fan-folded and fan-formed leaves are entire 

 and wedge-shaped at the base, feather-veined, toothed only 

 above and at.the blunt end, set rather close to the stem in 

 sociable proximity, frequently smooth, often slightly var- 

 nished above, lighter and downy beneath. The general effect 

 of the foliage is that of a soft sea-green, or hazy hue, which 

 is greatly enhanced when the very numerous straight, silky 

 tails of the seed, two to four inches long, at first prudishly 

 close-pressed, at length, towards maturity, begin to spirally 

 coil and spread their tiny plumes as softly as the beautiful 

 Smoke Tree. The flowers are rather inconspicuous, one or 

 two of these cup-like and rayless, with fifteen to twenty-five 

 stamens in two to three rows, set on the edge of this calyx- 

 like or real calyx-cup, seen springing from the axil-forks of 

 the leaves; in this last they stand on stalks one fourth to 

 half an inch long, usually bent back. Flowers and fruits 

 from May to July. 



The wood, as before observed, is dark-colored, with very 



