16 
Each quality is subdivided again into various grades of superiority: 
Thick into superfine, superior, ordinary, and inferior. 
Ordinary into superfine, first, second, third, and fourth qualities. 
Bastard or thin into good, ordinary, inferior, and reruse. 
These grades are again divided into classes, ‘“‘ champagne cork” being 
the highest quality. 
USES. 
Cork was not generally used for stopping bottles until toward the 
end of the seventeenth century, though the Greeks and Romans used 
it for their wine vessels to a limited extent. 
The importance of the cork crop has been appreciated in Spain only 
since 1850. The uses are numerous, each country having its own pecul- 
iar manner of utilizing this bark. The bottle cork is of course the 
article most largely manufactured and most universally used. In Spain 
are manufactured beehives, pails, pillows, window lights; in Portugal, 
roofing, linings for garden walls, fences, etc.; in Italy, images, paving 
for footpaths, sometimes used in buttresses of village churches; in 
Turkey, cabins and coffins; in Morocco, drinking vessels, plates, tubs, 
house conduits; in Algeria, shoes, wearing apparel, saddles, horse- 
shoes, armor, common boats, landmarks, fortifications, furniture, ete. 
The possibilities and usefulness of this bark are seemingly unlimited, 
and it is as great a necessity to the Algerian as the agave is to the 
Mexican or the palm to the Arab. 
In France cork is used for insulating boilers, and being a bad con- 
ductor of heat and cold it is frequently used in situations where pro- 
tection from either is necessary. Of the waste cork from the cutting of 
bottle stoppers, about 30 per cent is utilized for filling cushions, horse 
collars, hats, mattresses, also for the manufacture of cork-dust bricks, 
which are used where excessive dryness is required, and for wheels 
having small diameters. Pasteboard of a high grade is manufactured 
from French cork. The ground cork is thoroughly mixed with paper 
pulp by means of a machine, and the water is expressed by heavy Hol- 
land presses and the material dried. Cork waste is also used in the 
manufacture of linoleum, in lifeboats, buoys, etc., in insoles for shoes, 
artificial limbs, cork concrete, and many other articles where lightness 
and elasticity are required. 
THE CORK OAK IN AMERICA. 
The following notes were kindly furnished for this Bulletin by Prof. 
Charles H. Shinn, of the University of California: 
There are twelve or fourteen cork oak trees growing on the farm of Mr. 8. Richard- 
son, Alhambra post-office, San Gabriel Valley, California, about 4 miles from Pasa- 
dena. Thesoil is a sandy loam, irrigated as required. The site is near a creek bank 
and is occupied mainly by an orange grove. 
