Page:Timber and Timber Trees, Native and Foreign.djvu/47

IV.] a very objectionable form. These species are among the hard and strong woods used for architectural purposes in this country, and by cabinet-makers for the manufacture of furniture, and for other domestic uses.

As regards the white or softer woods, it is generally very small in the Dantzic, but extensive and open in Riga and Swedish Fir. In the Pines, the Canadian Red is perhaps the closest and least of all affected by it, the Canadian Yellow coming next in order; but in the Pitch Pine of the Southern States of North America it is often present in a more enlarged form, and the centre, or pith, of this species cannot well be approached if thin boards are required to be cut from it.

This defect, as before mentioned, affects and pervades more or less nearly every description of timber; it is common to all the exogenous trees, and neither age, soil, nor situation appears to have anything to do with its origin. It must consequently be accepted as an arrangement in the natural order of things for which there is no help, and our study should be to so utilise the trees possessing it in its most extensive and objectionable form, as to employ them for purposes which require their full growth, doing as little as possible to them if we wish to convert the logs profitably. The heart-shake is, nevertheless, so very insignificant in some timber, that many persons, not professionally educated to the work, might look at a log without suspecting its presence. Others, again, if they did discover it, would hardly consider it to be of any importance, as it is often so small that the blade of a penknife could scarcely be thrust into it.

There are, however, several varieties of timber which have it, not in an insignificant form or shape, but extending from the pith to a distance of about