MAPLE: ECONOMICAL USES. The maple is a very useful tree for industrial purposes, especially in America. Of the sugar-maple it is calculated that there are ten milliona of acres in the states of Now York and Pennsylvania alone. The wood, when cut, le white ; but after being wrought and exposed some time to the light, it assumes a roseate tint ; its grain is fine and close, and when polished it presents a silky lustre. It is used in many of the statea as a substitute for beech, birch, and elm ; it I. employed by wheelwrights for axletrees and spokes ; it is made into Windsor chairs ; it forms the keels and bottoms of many ships built in Maine; and it constitutes the framework of whole villages of timber.houses. The wood of the scarlet or swamp maple Is largely used for the frame, nave, and spokes of spinning wheela ; for eeddle-trees ; for yokes, shovels, and wooden dishes; for bcslateads, nearly equal in richness and lustre to those of the finest mahogany ; and especially for Windier chairs, the manufacture of which is lamely carried on at New York and Philadelphia, with maple wood brought down by canal and railway from the forests. The wood has a fine close grain, is easily wrought in the lathe, and acquires by polishing a glossy and silky lustre. Some of the old trees, in which the grain is undulated or curled, have so much strength and toughness added to the natural lightness and beauty, that the wood is eagerly purchased for making the stocks of rifles and fowling pieces. The wood of the white maple is whiter, softer, and lighter than that of the other species; it is used for making bowls, and in cabinet work, but not so largely as the two kinds just noticed. The wood of the sycamore maple is yellowish, compact, firm, finely-grained, sometimes veined, susoeptible of a high polish, and easily worked at the bench or the lithe; it is very much employed in France and Germany by wheel wrights, cabinet-makers, turners, wood carvers, musical instrument makers, toy makers, gunstock makers, and the manufacturers of pestles, rollers, wooden spoons and platters, and numerous other articles : in England and Scotland it is used for many of tho above-named purposes, and also for eider presses. Besides these various useful purposes, special examples of the maple are much prized for the beauty of their grain, rendering them well-fitted for surface-veneers for picture frames and cabinetwork. About one specimen in a hundred of the scarlet
maple presents a wavy appearance, produced by a serpentine arrange ment of the grain, rendering the wood difficult to split and work, but highly beautiful when smoothed and polished. Some specimens of tho sugar maple present what is called a bird's eye arrangement of the grain ; when smoothed and polished, the surface is diversified witjt roundish spots of peculiar character, reflecting flashes of light In a beautiful way. Mr. lioltzapffel, in an examination to discover the cause of this, found that the stem of the tree, when the hark is stripped of presents little pits or hollows of irregular form—some as if made with a conical punch; others ill-defined and flattened like tho impression from a nail-head. He found that these hollows are caused by internal spines or points in the bark. The layers of the wood being moulded as it were upon these spines, each fibre becomes abruptly curved at these points; insomuch that when cut through by tho amoothiug-plane, they give, in the tangential slice, the appearance of projections—just as in 801330 rose-engine patterns and medallion engravings, the closer approximation of the lines at their curvatures causes those parts to be more black or shaded, and produces upon the plain surface the appearances of waves or furrows and ridges.
Thera are many other economical uses to which the maple is applied. Charcoal made from the augar-maple wood la much prized in countries where coal-fuel is scarce; while both the plain wood and the charcoal of the sycamore and white species have a high reputation for their halting qualities. The Kahnucks boil the maple-fruit in water, and eat it with milk and butter. The horses and cattle In Nova Scotia browse eagerly upon the leavea of the striped-bark maple. A coloured liquid, obtained by boiling the cellular matter of the inner bark, is used in America for black-dyeing. Potash is made extensively in the same region from the ashes of the burnt roots ; and sugar is largely prepared from the sap, especially of the variety known as the sugar maple.