190 
TIMBER AND TIMBER TREES. [chap. 
dimensions, but, unfortunately, is liable to early decay in 
the centre. The sound trees, however, yield solid and 
useful timber of from 20 to 40 feet in length by 11 to 24 
inches square, while those with faulty centres furnish only 
indifferent squares of smaller sizes, or pieces unequally 
sided, called flitches. 
The wood is red in colour, hard, heavy, close in 
texture, slightly wavy in the grain, and with occasionally 
enough figure to give it value for ornamental purposes ; 
it works up quite smoothly, and takes a good polish. 
Cabinet-makers may therefore readily employ it for 
furniture, but for architectural and other works where 
great strength is required it should be used with caution, 
as the experiments prove it to be somewhat brittle in 
character. 
Some few years since a small supply of this wood 
was sent to Woolwich Dockyard, with the view to test its 
quality and fitness for employment iq ship-building, but 
the sample did not turn out well, owing to the want of 
proper care in the selection of the wood in the colony. 
The shipping officer sent only such small squares as 
might have been produced from logs cut or quartered 
longitudinally, which left in each case one weak or shaky 
angle, instead of sending the full-sized compact square 
log representing all that the growth of the tree would 
p-ive. It is just possible, however, that this was unavoid¬ 
able, since it may be inferred from the nature of the 
conversions that the trees from which they were cut 
commenced to decay at the centre at or about mid-life, 
and they had become hollow at the root-end of the 
stem, long before they arrived at maturity. 
This remarkable defect being characteristic of the 
Jarrah tree, it follows that no compact and solid square 
log beyond the medium size can be obtained of the full 
