TRUE MAHOGANY, Fie 
weighing approximately 46 pounds, and 520 board feet a ton. The 
averaze mahogany wood from Cuba has a specific gravity of about 
0.72, and a weight per cubic foot of about 45 pounds, 533 board feet 
weighing a ton. The lightest mahogany wood is the baywood, 
from Mexico, which has a specific gravity of 0.561. A cubic foot 
weighs only about 35 pounds, and about 686 board feet are required 
to make a ton. 
The pale-yellow or whitish sapwood of mahogany is thick in 
young and in rapid-growing trees and thin in old and im slow- 
growing ones. In Florida the sap is often less than 1 inch in thick- 
ness on the largest trees, with about 25 annual rings of growth. 
Compared with this, the sapwood of large trees from Mexico and 
Honduras is often more than four times as thick and contains less 
than one-half as many rings of growth. The structural characters 
of the sapwood and heartwood of mahogany are, of course, similar, 
but the sapwood is almost never used and is generally removed be- 
fore the logs are shipped to market. If it is not removed 1mme- 
diately after the trees are felled it is apt to become affected by fungi 
which may also damage the heartwood. 
The color of heartwood ranges from a rich light brown to a 
dark red-brown, the shade becoming deeper with age and exposure. 
Florida mahogany is the darkest colored, Cuban and Honduras wood 
come next, and the baywood grade of Mexican mahogany is the 
lightest colored. These marked differences in color, as also in 
density and weight, appear to depend entirely upon the rate of 
growth, which, in turn, is dependent upon soil and climatic condi- 
tions. 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WOOD FROM DIFFERENT REGIONS. 
When mahogany comes into the market it is graded without refer- 
ence to whether it is the wocd of the small-leafed or large-leafed 
species. Timber merchants and wood users are interested primarily 
in the origin of the wood, which affords them a clue as to its quality. 
Mahogany from Florida is the hardest and heaviest of all the West 
Indian grades. The wood has very narrow annual rings of growth, 
and the pores are very small, often not more than 0.1 of a millimeter 
in diameter. The pith rays are broad and quite clearly defined, thus 
contrasting strongly with Mexican mahogany from the coastal plains, 
which has pores from two to three times as large, and the pith rays 
narrower and less numerous. 
Cuban mahogany is hard, heavy, and slightly darker in color than | 
that of British Honduras. The annual rings of growth are very nar- 
row, especially in trees grown on the higher elevations. The pores, 
