CHAPTER II 
HOW TO TELL THE WOODS 
Muce is heard today about the use of substitutes 
for wood. Concrete ties and telephone poles are to 
some degree taking the place of the oak, chestnut and 
white cedar, ete.; furniture is being made from steel 
‘and brass, and a wooden bedstead is quite rare in this 
age of brass and iron. Nevertheless on account of its 
cheapness and workability wood always will be in demand 
for certain uses and everyone should be able to recog- 
nize the more common kinds of wood from their appear- 
ance and structure wherever they may be found. 
Of the 40,000,000,000 board feet of timber sawed 
each year three-fourths comes from the evergreen trees 
and is therefore considered softwood, for the lumber- 
men call every kind of wood obtained from an evergreen 
tree soft, while the boards sawed from broadleaved trees 
are called hardwoods regardless of the actual hardness. 
In some cases, however, hardwoods like poplar and 
basswood are softer than longleaf pine. The exten- 
sive use of the softwoods is not alone due to the fact 
that the supply is more plentiful—of the timber now 
standing in the United States four-fifths is coniferous— 
but as a rule such timber is more easily worked and 
holds its shape better. In all about one hundred and 
fifty species are used in the lumber trade, but only 
forty to fifty are extensively used, and of these a few 
of the more common will be described. "When timber 
is in the log, the bark can be of great assistance in 
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