EUEOPEAN TIMBEE 
35 
the heartwood. In the poor quahties it is the timber 
largely used by the " jerry builder," and in a good deal 
which owners would not call by that name ; inferior in 
strength and durability to redwood, unfitted for good 
exterior work, suitable for a cheap description of interior 
work such as shelves, common tables, flooring and panelling, 
it is used for all the classes of interior work for which the 
better class redwood is used, and is probably quite as 
much used as redwood in ordinary house building ; some of 
the best of it is very good, but it is liable to shrink if less 
than an inch thick. A large quantity is used for scaffold 
poles and pit props in mines, of G to 8 ft. in length 
and G to 8 inches in diameter. It is much valued as one 
of the resonance woods for the bellies of fiddles and 
violins, as the sycamore and maple are for the backs. Not 
only is there a large trade in planed white as well as 
yellow boards, which are also imported tongued and 
grooved, but a great quantity of manufactured Joinery, 
doors and door frames, window frames, etc., comes from 
Norway and Sweden. The best of the Norwegian timber is 
used up for flooring and planed goods and manufactured 
joinery. Spruce forms much the larger proportion of the 
timber used in the toy trade of Austria and the Tyrol. 
Good deals, either yellow or white, should be bright in 
colour and close in grain ; a dull colour and open porous 
grain of a woolly character betoken poor wood. Spruce is 
hardly distinguishable from fir except by the presence of 
resin ducts, which are wanting in the latter. 
The usual trade terms for Baltic timber are as follows : — ■ 
Logs or baulks, various lengths and sizes, up to 
40 ft. long. 
Battens and deals, various lengths, 4 to 9 inches 
wide and 2 to 4 inches thick ; average lengths about 
18 ft. 
D 2 
