GENERAL APPEARANCE OF DEFECTS. 61 
The failure of the original wounds to close or the formation of 
loose, knotty, and gnarled tissue, together with excessive staining, 
are serious defects which greatly reduce the market value of the 
lumber, as may readily be seen from the following definition of the 
grades of maple lumber: 
Firsts. — Firsts must be S inches or over wide, 10, 12, 14. and 16 feet long, and free 
from all defects, except in pieces 10 inches or over wide, which may have one sound 
standard defect. 
Seconds. — Seconds must he G inches or over wide, 8 to 16 feet long: pieces 8 feet 
long must be clear. . . . 
No. 1 commons. — Xo. 1 commons must be 3 inches or over wide, 6 to 16 feet long; 
pieces 3 or 4 inches wide must have 1 face clear. — [Inspection rules. National Hard- 
wood Lumber Association.] 
It is evident that lumber sawn from a maple abundantly punctured 
by sapsuckers would not fare well at an inspection. Very few, if 
any, clear pieces of the sizes above specified, the smallest of which is 
3 inches wide by 6 feet long, could be obtained from such a tree. 
Hence most of the lumber would be classed as Xo. 2 common, the 
fourth market grade, which means a heavy loss. 
The effects of sapsucker work in other trees are more or less similar 
to those in hard maple, but vary according to the extent of injury 
and the habits of growth of the tree. For instance, the defects are 
usually much more pronounced in trees in whose bark holes remain 
open long, whether owing to slow growth or other reason. On the 
other hand, trees of rapid growth quickly heal and the blemishes 
are small and soon deeply buried. Wood with especially porous 
grain is extensively stained, while dense wood is less affected. 
Defects due to sapsucker work are sufficiently similar in a general 
way, however, to be identifiable in any wood. On the end of logs, 
healed supsucker wounds or bird pecks, as they are commonly called, 
appear as larger or smaller stains with more or less open fissures or 
checks extending a short distance toward the bark. The general effect 
is that of T-shaped or triangular marks or cavities surrounded by 
more or less stain. Several usually occur along the same wood ring 
(see figs. 24, 29, 33, 37; PI. VIII, fig. 2; PL X, fig. 3). The checks 
may be continuous, in which case they constitute a defect known as 
rind gall (see figs. 30 and 35). In longitudinal section, as in most 
boards and in quarter-sawn or sliced material, bird pecks usually 
appear as small knots (also often T-shaped — figs. 15,16, and 23) around 
which is a greater or less amount of stained wood. They are easily 
distinguished from true knots, however, which are due to adven- 
titious buds and embedded bases of twigs and limbs. The gnarly 
or curled growth caused by bird pecks is all on one side of a line of 
separation between annual rings (see fi°;s. 15, 17, 22, and 23). In 
