Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/210

190 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 give. It is just possible, however, that this was unavoidable, 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