There is a great demand for trees that are • strong and tough, and above all durable when in contact with the ground, for telephone and telegraph poles, fence-posts, railway sleepers or "ties" and sills. Before blight threatened to exterminate them, chestnut trees (Castanea dentate) were chosen and even planned for this purpose, their timber being light, strong in young trees and easily split for these purposes, as well as for furniture, interior work, founda tions for veneers and the like. It also bears delicious, thin-shelled nuts in prickly burrs. The locust (Robinia pseudacacia), that is often planted as an ornamental tree on account of its heavy clusters of fragrant, honey-yielding white flowers and is known as "Acacia" in Europe, is another source of a hard, heavy, durable timber for fence-posts. The varying color of the heartwood has caused it to be called yellow, green, red and even black locust. Out of it are made tough ringing policemen's clubs. Its good qualities are shared by the heavily-armed honey locust (Gleditsia tri; canthos), of which the fruits are heavy pods filled with sweet pulp. The osage orange (Torylon pomiferum), although of moderate size only, furnishes a hard yellow wood used somewhat as a substitute for fustic and is suitable for ties and fence posts; it is, more over, a favorite hedging plant where it is hardy. Hardy catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) is another tree which has been planted experi mentally to furnish ties and poles. It grows very rapidly and produces wood that is among the most durable kinds known, but the trees have a tendency toward crooked growth.
Among conifers the Douglas fir is used for poles and ties where more 'durable timber does not exist, and the long leaf pine (Finns Plusiris), rapidly vanishing, is used in the South. The red cedar of the East (Juniperus Virginian) has heartwood which is one of the most valuable in America, not only for posts but for pencils, this soft, easily-cut, fra grant wood superseding every other kind for the latter purpose, when it can be cut from the great trees that form groves in middle Ten nessee. Since its odors repel insects, clothes
chests and closets are often made of cedar. Bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), very often used in place of pine, especially when exposed to the weather, is another post tree ornamental as well for its height and symmetry, growing to great height and bulk in swampy land, where it thrusts out of the water peculiar growths called °Knees?" It is deciduous like the tamarack (Larix laPicina), a common tree in Canada; whose tall slender boles are considered to be the strongest and most durable of Canadian woods not only for posts but for ship's keels and masts. Tall-growing white cedars, or arbor-vita (Thuya), whose flattened, fan-like spray is familiar in hedges, are very durable when exposed to the weather as posts or shingles. The giant Western species (T. plicata) averages more than 150 feet in height, having in maturity a curiously fluted conical trunk, covered with a tough stringy bark, inner layers of which are converted by Indians into fabrics and baskets. It is called red cedar or simply °cedar° in the West, more than half of the shingles in the United States being manu factured from its fragrant, reddish, light and durable wood. Consult Browne D. J., The Trees of America' (New York n. d.) ; Elliott, S. B., (Important Timber Trees of the United States' (Boston and New York 1912) •, A. S., (Practical (New York 1884); Henkel, A., 'American Medicinal Barks) (United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry Bulletin 139, Wash 1909)- ' Small, H. B., 'Canadian Forests/ (Montreal 1884); Sudworth, G. B., 'Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope) (United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington 1908), and many pamphlets issued by the United States Department of Agricul ture.