The North American Sylva, Or, A Description of the Forest Trees, of the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia: Considered Particularly with Respect to Their Use in the Arts and Their Introduction Into Commerce; to which is Added a Description of the Most Useful of the European Forest Trees, Volume 3

Front Cover
Thomas Dobson [and] Solomon Conrad, 1819 - Science - 276 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 212 - The wood of the American Larch is superior to any species of Pine or Spruce , and unites all the properties which distinguish the European species , being exceedingly strong and singularly durable.
Page 139 - ... feet wide. In the middle is a hole with a conduit leading to the ditch, in which is formed a receptacle for the resin as it flows out. Upon the surface of the mound, beaten hard and coated with clay, the wood is laid round in a circle like rays.
Page 212 - European species, and collected in small bunches ; they are shed in the autumn, and renewed in the spring. The flowers, like those of the pines, are separate upon the same tree ; the male aments, which appear before the leaves, are small, oblong, and scaly, with two yellow anthers under each scale. The female flowers are also disposed in aments, and are composed of floral leaves covering two ovaries, which in process of time become small, erect, scaly cones, three or four lines long. At the base...
Page 132 - ... resinous matter, which is abundant, is more uniformly distributed than in the other species ; hence the wood is stronger, more compact and more durable : it is, besides, fine-grained, and susceptible of a bright polish. These advantages give it a preference, to every other pine ; but its quality is modified by the nature of the soil in which it grows.
Page 184 - As two-inch plank, it is frequently employed for threshing-floors, and also for grain-bins, because, as it is alleged, rats will not gnaw the wood. As inchboards, its most common use is for the first covering of the frames of houses, called
Page 84 - ... and doubly denticulated. They are generally smaller than those of the red elm, of a thinner texture, and a smoother surface, with more regular and prominent ribs. This species differs, also, essentially from the red elm and European elm in its flowers and seeds. The flowers appear before the leaves, and are very small, of a purple colour, supported by short, slender footstalks, and united in bunches at the extremity of the branches. In 1846, the white elm was noticed in flower, at Hampton Ferry,...
Page 85 - These limbs, not widely divergent near the base, approach and cross each other eight or ten feet higher, and diffuse on all sides, long, flexible, pendulous branches, bending into regular arches, and floating lightly in...
Page 161 - With this view an experiment has been imagined of a hole several feet deep made in the top of the mast, filled with oil , and hermetically sealed ; the oil is said to be absorbed in a few months. The bowsprits and yards of ships of war are of this species. The wood is not resinous enough to furnish turpentine for commerce...
Page 86 - ... fibres, it exhibits the same numerous and fine undulations, but it splits more easily, and has less compactness. It is, however, used at the North for the naves of coach-wheels, because it is difficult to procure the black gum. In Maine it is used for the keels of vessels. Its bark is said to be easily detached during eight months of the year; soaked in water, and suppled by pounding, it is used in the Northern states for the bottoms of common chairs. MichauX.

Bibliographic information